Reflections from the NNPHL Global Leadership Action Summit

By: Melody Wei, Senior Program Officer, Humanitarian Research & Training Unit at Concern Worldwide US

In July 2024, the National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership (NNPHL) hosted its first Global Leadership Action Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, bringing together a group of 39 exemplary alumni participants from across 19 countries. This inaugural summit focused on climate change and its impact on communities already in crisis, a topic relevant to all participants regardless of their context.??

The concept of the Leadership Action Summit itself was inspired by NNPHL alumni, who have consistently expressed a desire for more opportunities to deepen their engagement with the program. The Summit provides an advanced leadership track, featuring new curriculum built on the foundations of adaptive leadership, psychological resilience, and effective management. The training also featured offsite visits to the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University for a panel discussion with key stakeholders on disaster management systems in Malaysia, and the Forest Research Institute Malaysia , where participants hiked through the Bukit Lagong Forest Reserve and learned about the country’s conservation efforts.?

The climate components of the training, led by Paul Knox Clarke , gave participants the opportunity to apply leadership theory to real life challenges and learn from each other’s contexts and experiences.

Perhaps the greatest takeaway for the participants, beyond skills and theory, was the sense of community and network developed throughout the week. Participants designed both personal and regional action plans during the week with the support of their colleagues, and built invaluable relationships that will last beyond the training.?

Funded by USAID - Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance , the National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership (NNPHL) is implemented by Concern Worldwide in partnership with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and International Medical Corps . Since its inception, NNPHL has been committed to improving the effectiveness of the humanitarian system by equipping humanitarians with the skills and leadership competencies needed to tackle the most pressing humanitarian challenges of our time.??

To date, the program has directly trained more than 500 humanitarians from 60 countries through NNPHL’s rigorous blended learning program and has reached more than 11,000 additional humanitarians through our online course and knowledge sharing sessions. NNPHL strives to meet the specific leadership and management needs of national NGO humanitarian professionals through a revitalized online learning platform to be launched this fall that will make the program’s learning freely available to the public in multiple critical languages. The program has also undertaken critical research on the leadership challenges faced by humanitarians, an understudied group of professionals.

To learn more about upcoming training opportunities and about the NNPHL program, please visit https://concernusa.org/humanitarian-training/nnphl/.??