Learning

Strengthening our network through shared insights

At NEAR, learning is a shared practice. We learn alongside our members – at team, organisational, and network levels – evaluating what works, what doesn’t, and why, so our movement can adapt and grow.

By listening deeply, analysing critically, and sharing openly, we generate insight that strengthens day-to-day practice, informs organisational decisions, and shapes collective action across the network. In doing so, we support learning that also reaches beyond NEAR, contributing to wider sector-level change.

Collective Insight

Our Approach to Learning is Grounded in Collaboration

Across the network, members co-create the tools and spaces that generate shared insight and support learning at multiple levels – within teams, across NEAR as an organisation, and collectively as a network.

1

Pause & Reflect sessions

Creating space for honest conversations, collective sense-making, and adaptation — ensuring the network learns from experience rather than just activity.

2

Member Surveys

Bringing the voices, realities, and ambitions of our network to the forefront — centring member experience in how NEAR understands its own progress and priorities.

3

Trend Mapping & Analysis

Helping us anticipate shifts, highlight innovation, and identify opportunities for change across the humanitarian and localisation landscape.

Learning That Shapes Our Work

Learning at NEAR is about more than measuring impact. It is an ongoing process of adapting, strengthening, and evolving our work – at team, organisational, and network levels. We use what we learn to:

  • Shape what we do and how we do it as a network
  • Ensure our work remains responsive to community-driven solutions
  • Strengthen partnerships through transparency and shared responsibility

Learning is how we stay accountable – to each other, to our members, and to the communities we serve.

From Insight to Influence

Turning Learning into Change

The learning generated within NEAR informs the different kinds of change we seek to advance in the aid system.

Incremental Change

Some learning supports incremental change

Some learning supports incremental change – practical improvements within existing humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding systems. This includes evidence that helps track commitments, improve practice, and strengthen accountability at policy and crisis-response levels.

Cultural Change

Challenging Power Dynamics and Attitudes

Other learning contributes to cultural change, challenging attitudes, behaviours, and power dynamics that continue to shape how aid is designed and delivered. By surfacing lived experience and collective reflection, we help shift how actors across the system understand partnership, leadership, and localisation.

Transformative Change

Longer-Term Shifts Toward Local Leadership

Over time, learning also supports transformative change – contributing to longer-term shifts toward locally led, equitable, and sustainable approaches. By carrying insights from our network into global policy, coordination, and funding spaces, we help ensure that the wider system learns from the leadership and experience of local actors.

The Learning Team

Teresa Crawford

Learning Director

Augustus Emenogu

Learning Manager