Beyond Training: Locally Led Learning for Sudan’s Humanitarian Responders
Across Sudan, local NGOs, community-based organisations, Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), and volunteer networks are carrying much of the humanitarian response. They are doing so in an environment shaped by conflict, funding constraints, and rapidly changing needs.
Many humanitarian training programmes continue to rely on standardised content and delivery models developed elsewhere. While these approaches can provide useful technical knowledge, they do not always reflect local realities or address the practical barriers that organisations face when applying learning in their day-to-day work.
RedR’s Strengthening Humanitarian Response in Sudan programme takes a different approach. The programme will support 525 Sudanese responders and organisations through a combination of technical learning, resource mobilisation support, coaching, and ongoing accompaniment. The objective is not simply to deliver courses. It is to support local actors to strengthen capabilities they identify as priorities and can apply within their own contexts.
Beyond Training Delivery
A learning solution is more than a training course.
Learning is most valuable when it builds on existing knowledge and responds to the constraints and opportunities people face in their own contexts. Training is only one part of that process.
For this reason, RedR combines facilitated learning with coaching, peer exchange, practical tools, and opportunities for continued engagement. The focus is on supporting application rather than completion. Success is not measured by attendance figures alone. It is reflected in whether learning is useful, whether it is adopted in practice, and whether organisations are better able to achieve the objectives they have set for themselves.
Starting with Needs and Existing Capacity
The programme was designed following consultations and learning needs assessments with Sudanese responders and organisations.
These assessments identified priority areas including digital literacy, project planning and implementation, humanitarian coordination, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), gender-based violence (GBV), and resource mobilisation. Programme design builds on the existing knowledge, experience, and contextual expertise of Sudanese responders. Learning activities are intended to support capabilities that already exist within local organisations and communities.
Programme design has also been mapped against recognised humanitarian competency frameworks. This helps ensure that learning objectives are clearly defined and connected to skills and behaviours that are valued across the humanitarian sector. RedR is aligning this work with the Humanitarian Learning Standards and the Standards for the Assessment of Humanitarian Competencies that underpin HPass. These standards provide a framework for quality, consistency, and recognition while remaining grounded in locally identified learning priorities.
Learning that Reflects Context
Learning must reflect the realities in which people operate. In Sudan, this may include limited connectivity, disrupted infrastructure, changing access conditions, and varying levels of digital confidence. Examples, case studies, scenarios, and discussions need to make sense within these realities if learning is to be useful.
Language remains an important part of accessibility. RedR is increasingly adapting and translating learning resources, including self-paced digital modules, so that participants can engage with content in ways that are more accessible and relevant to their working environments. Translation is not simply a technical exercise. It is part of ensuring that knowledge is available to a wider range of practitioners and not restricted by language barriers.
The programme also recognises that digital skills are becoming increasingly important across humanitarian work. A new Digital Literacy module will serve as the starting point for the learning pathway. It will focus on areas such as online collaboration, information management, virtual learning, and the responsible use of digital and AI-enabled tools. These themes will continue throughout the programme, including within project management, implementation, proposal development, and resource mobilisation activities.
The aim is not to promote technology for its own sake. It is to help responders navigate tools that are already influencing how humanitarian organisations operate, communicate, and access resources.
Supporting Locally Led Learning
Effective learning is shaped by the people who will use it. This means creating space for local actors to influence how learning is designed, adapted, delivered, and sustained over time.
As part of the programme, coaching support will be provided to strengthen the capacity of Sudanese trainers and learning practitioners. This support is intended to help local actors further adapt learning approaches to their own priorities and contexts and to increase their role in future learning initiatives.
Where appropriate, participants will also be able to receive HPass digital badges linked to recognised competency standards. While credentials alone do not demonstrate capability, they can provide formal recognition of learning achievements and help practitioners demonstrate competencies that may support future professional opportunities.
Learning as Part of a Wider Process
Humanitarian organisations often work under significant pressure with limited time and resources. Training by itself cannot resolve these challenges.
What learning can do is create opportunities to strengthen skills, share experience, build confidence, and support reflection on practice. Whether this leads to meaningful organisational change depends on many factors beyond the learning event itself.
For that reason, RedR’s approach places equal importance on relevance, application, accessibility, and local ownership. By combining locally informed design, recognised competency standards, multilingual learning resources, digital innovation, and ongoing support, the programme aims to contribute to stronger humanitarian capabilities while recognising that sustainable change is shaped primarily by the individuals and organisations leading the response themselves.
This work is made possible with the support of Jersey Overseas Aid and the people of Jersey.
