The Humanitarian Leadership Academy is pleased to announce the launch of a new Arabic-language podcast series to amplify the voices, experiences, and leadership of local humanitarian actors in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt).
Produced in partnership with Save the Children, the podcast provides local humanitarian leaders in oPt a global platform to share their own insights on the challenges, innovations, and opportunities shaping humanitarian and development work. Episodes of the series, Local leadership in humanitarian action: voices from Palestine, will be released throughout August – September 2026.
Amplifying humanitarian voices across oPt
Through the podcast, listeners will be able to hear directly from leaders through this series of interviews showcasing the knowledge, expertise and lived experiences of Palestinian humanitarian leaders. Their insights also contribute to wider conversations around localisation, leadership, and community resilience. To support accessibility for global audiences, each episode will feature English language captions and transcripts, as well as companion articles featuring thematic reflections.
Co-creation with local leaders
In coordination with Save the Children oPt country office, the series was designed collaboratively with local partners to ensure the content reflects the realities and priorities of Palestinian organisations.
Through a series of consultations and co-design workshops, participants identified themes and priority areas that are most relevant to humanitarian leadership today. These discussions shaped the podcast episodes, including local and youth leadership, education, recovery, climate change and rights and participation of people with disabilities.
This collaborative approach ensured the podcast remained grounded in local knowledge and addressed issues that matter most to communities and humanitarian practitioners.
Huseyin Arslan, the HLA’s Crisis Response Senior Lead, based in Türkiye, led this project, coordinating with the Save the Children Country Office and local organisations, and conducting the podcast interviews. Huseyin holds over a decade of experience in humanitarian response including in Syria, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
Reflecting on the experience of this project, Huseyin said:
“One of the most rewarding aspects of hosting these conversations has been hearing directly from leaders who are living and working through incredibly complex humanitarian realities. Every guest shares not only technical expertise but also personal experiences, reflections, and hope for the future.
These conversations go beyond describing challenges, they highlight practical solutions, local innovation, and the resilience that continues to drive humanitarian action despite difficult circumstances. Whether you work in humanitarian response, development, academia, or simply want to better understand the realities facing communities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, this series offers firsthand perspectives that are rarely heard.”
Farah AbuSahliya, Communications Manager at Save the Children oPt Country office said:
“Palestinian civil society organisations have been courageously delivering for Palestinian children and families, while also navigating war, their repeated displacement and loss of loved ones. Throughout the horrors of the war in Gaza and an increasingly frightening environment in the West Bank, they have been on the ground doing everything possible to help. With their wealth of experience and knowledge, operating in conflict settings, we have a lot to learn from them.”
Why local leadership – and why now
The podcast is part of the HLA’s commitment to strengthening humanitarian leadership, promoting localisation, and supporting locally led action. It complements the HLA’s wider portfolio of work in oPt, including leadership development programmes, coaching, mentoring, organisational capacity strengthening, and learning initiatives with local organisations.
The podcast also serves as a knowledge-sharing product, ensuring that local experiences and evidence inform humanitarian policy and practice beyond Palestine.
It is hoped that the series will inspire practitioners, donors, policymakers, and humanitarian organisations to invest more intentionally in local leadership and to recognise the value of locally driven solutions.
The season launches with an episode featuring Fady Abed, Director of Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children (ASDC) in Gaza – an organisation with more than three decades of history serving people with and without disabilities. Reflecting on the challenges of leading community response, he says: “We were displaced with them, we remained with them.” Fady advocates for local leadership to be centred and supported under the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’, through meaningful partnership and multi-year funding support. Visit the launch episode webpage in English and Arabic.
The podcast episodes will be available to stream in Arabic audio episode format from the Humanitarian Leadership Academy YouTube channel.
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* Image is used for thematic illustration purposes only and does not depict podcast guests.
