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You know what no textbook can teach.

Because you are there every day. The Geneva Learning Foundation helps you turn what you know into certification, implementation, and change your community can feel, with peers from Lagos to La Paz to Manila.

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80,000

health and humanitarian professionals learning and leading together across 137 countries.

On average, one new leader joins every 45 minutes. Perhaps while you read this page.

Estimate based on reported reach and average monthly growth. Verified figures appear in the annual report.

What brings you here today?

I work in health or humanitarian response Earn certification by leading change on a real challenge from your own work, with peers who face the same realities. Start with certification I fund or partner with health programmes See how ten years of peer learning can carry your guidance into implementation, at scale, through the people closest to the challenge. See what we can build together I am hearing about TGLF for the first time Meet a Swiss non-profit founded in 2016 on a simple belief: the people closest to a challenge must lead the change that answers it. Meet the Foundation

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Chapter 1 • Start here

Your experience is where change begins

You have seen a road flood before a vaccination day. A family say no. A supply run out. A plan that works on paper fail in practice. You may also have found a way forward. Every TGLF programme starts there, and does not stop until something changes for the people you serve.

First, youShare

One true experience from your work. No theory required, just what actually happened.

Then, youCompare

Peers tell you what they saw and tried in their own settings. Together you weigh it against sound technical guidance.

Next, youBuild

A practical project for a challenge you choose, made stronger by structured feedback you give and receive.

Finally, youLead

You implement with your community, see what changes for the people you serve, and help others do the same.

Sharing, learning, and planning are means to one end: change your community can feel.

Knowledge matters. People, trust, and access to opportunity are what put knowledge to work.

  • Change you led on a challenge you chose, with and for your community.
  • Certification documenting what you contributed and what you implemented.
  • People who understand your work across roles, countries, and organizations.
  • Confidence to explain your thinking, make decisions, and lead.

Is this for you?

If you work for health or for your community, in any role, in any country: yes. Somewhere in this network is a peer who has faced your challenge.

  • Any role. Community health worker, nurse, midwife, doctor, manager, researcher, policy maker, or volunteer.
  • Any topic. From immunization to climate to mental health, and the challenges that connect them.
  • Any country. Peers in 137 countries, most working at the local level in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
  • Any connection. Built for low bandwidth, with podcasts and offline materials for when the network fails.

Chapter 2 • Certification

A certificate should prove contribution and implementation, not attendance

Your TGLF certification records the work behind it: the challenge you examined, the project you built, the feedback you gave, and what changed when you acted. It is evidence you can put in front of an employer, a partner, or a professional body.

  • A clear record of contribution and implementation, useful in an appraisal, interview, or application.
  • Further opportunities inside TGLF learning and implementation programmes.
  • Collaborators and advisers among the peers who reviewed your work.
  • Leadership roles as a peer reviewer, facilitator, or Ambassador when calls open.

Certification is open all year. Share your email once, and every invitation comes to you with its dates, requirements, language, and any free pathway. Requirements and recognition differ by programme and country.

A certificate alone does not create change. In the climate and health programme, 82 out of 100 participants take action and create local solutions within weeks. That is the standard every pathway here is built around.

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Chapter 3 • The pathway

Start with one challenge. Keep moving until something changes.

Begin with a global event or a short certification. Each step turns experience into a tested plan, then implementation, then evidence, then wider opportunity. The order below is the journey thousands of your peers have taken.

Teach to Reach · since 2021Meet people who understand your work

Bring a real question, lesson, success, or problem. Hear what others tried. You do not need to arrive with an answer.

PrimerFind your first useful step

A short way into a major challenge. Connect reliable guidance with what peers have learned in practice, then decide what you can do next in your own setting.

Peer learning exerciseTurn experience into a project

Dig for root causes. Draft a practical project. Peers examine your thinking and you examine theirs. Their distance helps you see what is invisible from inside your own setting.

Impact AcceleratorImplement, with support

Support continues after planning ends. Choose one step you can complete. Act, report what changed, learn with peers, and take the next step.

Ideas EngineYour solution travels

Lessons from thousands of contributions return to the people who produced them, so that what worked in your district can help someone on another continent act sooner.

At every step you meet people, build trust, and show how you think and work. Over time the network becomes part of your professional life, connecting you to knowledge, collaboration, and roles that no single certificate could open.

Chapter 4 • Experiences

Learn from what your peers have lived

All experiences

Real accounts from health and humanitarian professionals: what happened, what they tried, and what changed.

Chapter 5 • Leadership

You may already be leading, without the title

You kept a service running when supplies failed. You reached a family others had missed. You changed the plan when the standard approach did not fit. You brought people together when trust was low. That is leadership, whether or not anyone gave you the word for it.

The map below is a way to chart your professional journey. It shows where you stand today and where to focus your effort so it makes the biggest difference, for your community’s future and for your own. Every certification on this page builds toward the highest level: the strategist, who changes systems and helps local knowledge travel.

The practitioner

Solves the problem in front of them, today, with what is at hand.

The collaborator

Studies the setting, adapts the approach, and brings others into the work.

The strategist

Changes systems, mobilizes resources, mentors people, and helps useful local knowledge travel.

These are ways of working, not job grades. You may be a strategist in one skill and a practitioner in another. That is normal, and it tells you exactly where to grow next.

You learn toSo that you can
Find the real problemMove past the first explanation and act on root causes.
Build trust with communitiesListen, keep promises, and shape action with the people affected.
Use data and AI with careMake better local decisions while protecting people, privacy, and judgment.
Find and use local resourcesKeep work moving when money, staff, or supplies run short.
Prepare for climate and One Health threatsConnect risks across people, animals, and the environment.
Protect people and services in crisisNegotiate access, reduce risk, and keep essential work going.
Support well-being at workRecognize distress and build stronger support for colleagues.
Learn through a networkExchange practical knowledge and solve problems with peers.
Join care, prevention, and equityReach the people routine systems miss.
The nine skills on the map

Chapter 7 • For partners and funders

Guidance does not implement itself. People do.

Change depends on professionals who understand local conditions, hold community trust, adapt when systems fail, and continue after a project ends. For ten years, TGLF has connected those people through certification, peer learning, and implementation support. Here is what that can do for your priority.

If your priority is toTGLF can help you create
Put guidance into practiceCertification that asks professionals to implement your guidance in their real work.
Reach people at scaleRapid participation through Primers, certification pathways, and Teach to Reach.
Strengthen local leadershipPractice across nine capabilities, tied to real challenges and observable work.
Go beyond training completionFollow-through into implementation via the Impact Accelerator.
Learn from implementationStructured practitioner contributions, progress reports, and shared lessons.
Build durable relationshipsNetworks connecting people across roles, countries, and organizations.
Use AI responsiblyAI-assisted learning and analysis that protect human judgment and local agency.

Ways to work together

  • Build a certification pathway around a shared priority.
  • Turn technical guidance or research into practice-based learning.
  • Mobilize professionals during an outbreak or crisis.
  • Support a local implementation network.
  • Strengthen leadership across a workforce.
  • Generate knowledge from frontline action.
  • Support free access and equitable certification.

Ten years of method, evidence, and relationships, ready to serve a shared priority.

Start a partnership conversation

Institutional research profile

Chapter 8 • About

Ten years of one simple belief

The people closest to a challenge must lead the change that answers it. The Geneva Learning Foundation, legally La Fondation Apprendre Genève, is a Swiss non-profit founded in 2016 to act on that belief. Here, a nurse, a community health worker, an emergency responder, a researcher, or a policy maker is never only a recipient of expert advice. Each is a learner, a teacher, a contributor, and a leader.

  • Action firstLearning becomes valuable when it improves action.
  • Experience countsProfessional experience is a source of knowledge, wherever it comes from.
  • Feedback is a giftGiving and receiving it helps both people grow.
  • Knowledge should travelAnd return to the communities that produced it, as a public good.
  • Technology serves peopleArtificial intelligence should expand human agency, never replace it.
  • Leadership is practiceIt begins with what you do, not the position you hold.

The faces of the Foundation

TGLF operates as a distributed network. A small core team leads a wide operation of programme faculty, facilitators, reviewers, translators, and contributors across the network. To add a team member, duplicate one of the boxes below.

Reda Sadki

Founder

Founded The Geneva Learning Foundation in 2016 and served as its first president. He writes on how people learn, how knowledge moves, and whose experience counts, at redasadki.me.

Charlotte Mbuh

Director of Programmes

Leads programme development and practitioner engagement across TGLF learning networks, from Teach to Reach to the certification pathways.

Claude Cardot, a.i.

Executive Assistant

The Foundation’s first agentic AI hire supports operations, publishing, and learner communication, always under human direction and review.

Governance: the Conseil de fondation

As a Swiss foundation, TGLF is registered in the Geneva Commercial Register, supervised by the foundation supervisory authority, and audited every year by an independent external auditor. Its statutes bind it to independence and neutrality. The Board of Trustees holds the Foundation to that standard, and each trustee anchors one strand of its work.

Dr. Karen E. Watkins

President · Education and leadership

Internationally recognized scholar of adult learning and learning organizations.

Dr. Shanthi Mendis

Secretary · Global health

Former WHO Senior Adviser for noncommunicable diseases, who led the development of the WHO PEN and PEN-H guidelines.

Bill Wiggenhorn

Member · Corporate learning

Founding Chief Learning Officer of Motorola University, the first corporate university.

Global Leadership Council

Governance does not stop at the Board. Each TGLF programme is guided by a Global Leadership Council: leaders from the communities the programme serves, who shape priorities, review what the programme produces, and keep every decision close to practice.

TGLF Fellows

TGLF Fellows are practitioners recognized for sustained contribution to the network’s learning and implementation work. Edit this text to describe the Fellowship in your own words.

All TGLF Fellows

TGLF Ambassadors

More than 500 certified alumni leaders serve as TGLF Ambassadors. They connect learners, champion implementation, and carry the work of the Foundation into their countries, institutions, and communities.

All TGLF Ambassadors

What you know can help someone. What they know can help you lead. Bring one challenge from your work.

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Chapter 6 • Join

Your next opportunity may begin in one email

Knowledge is necessary, and it is not enough. You also need people who will question your plan, share what they tried, and open doors. Two steps put you inside that network.

Step 1 Share your contact details

Join the Scholar Newsletter

Every invitation comes to you: new certification programmes with dates and requirements, Teach to Reach events, open calls for Ambassador, Fellow, and peer reviewer roles, practical reports, and new writing from TGLF leaders.

Free to join. Leave at any time. We write only when there is an opportunity or insight worth your attention.

Step 2 Follow along, wherever you already are

We meet you where you are

Between newsletters, the network lives on these channels, and some opportunities appear there first.

Podcast via YouTube Music, not available in all countries

Live events stream on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn, so you can catch up if you miss one.

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