Member Spotlight: YIELD Hub

What if the way we solve complex global health challenges is by learning together? 

Today’s global health challenges are increasingly complex and intersectional, and they rarely have straightforward solutions. They involve multiple actors, shifting contexts, competing priorities, and systems that are constantly evolving. Yet, organizations are often expected to act quickly and with precise certainty: developing the right strategy, delivering the intervention, demonstrating impact, and moving on. At YIELD Hub, we have been putting a different approach into practice: Action Learning.  

Action Learning is a structured peer-learning and capacity-strengthening approach that brings diverse organizations together to learn from one another, work through real challenges, and turn those insights into action. 

In the words of our Co-Director, Richard Dzikunu:

“Organizations that would ordinarily be deemed quite different from each other seem to be aligned in what they hope to achieve through the action learning process.”

Rather than beginning with a predetermined solution, Action Learning starts with a real challenge participants are already facing and creates the space, builds the relationships, and provides the process to work through them collectively. 

Our Action Learning Cycles (ALCs) bring together diverse stakeholders, including youth-led organizations, INGOs, researchers and funders, to collectively explore and respond to shared challenges in adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health and rights (AYSRHR). To date, we have facilitated 14 Action Learning Cycles, engaging more than 200 organizations across 40+ countries and 10 themes. These themes provide a space for members to validate key issues and messages at the intersection of AYSRHR and other issues, such as gender, climate change and sustainable financing.   

The process is intentionally iterative. Participants share experiences, successes, and challenges across different organizational and geographical contexts. Through facilitated reflection, they question assumptions, identify what is—and is not—working to develop a clear problem statement and action plan. They then test and adapt these processes in practice, while insights are captured and shared as practical resources for the wider sector. 

After four years of applying Action Learning, one lesson stands out: systems change rarely begins with ready-made solutions. More often, it starts with creating conditions for people to ask better questions. 

We have learned that there is no single blueprint for navigating complex challenges. Organizations need space to experiment, reflect, and adapt as realities change. In this sense, learning is not something that happens after implementation; it is part of the action itself. This is particularly relevant in global health, where responding to climate change, reducing health inequities, advancing meaningful youth partnership, and securing sustainable financing are beyond the reach of any single organization or intervention. Action Learning creates a space where different perspectives come together, turn experience into collective knowledge, and translate that knowledge into practical change. 

Interested in exploring how Action Learning could support your organization, partnership or response to a global health challenge? Get in touch with YIELD Hub to learn more about our approach and explore opportunities to work and learn together.