What makes an environment hostile?

This isn’t an easy question to answer. It is not just conflict, disaster, or political collapse. A hostile environment can look different depending on who you are, where you work and what you do. A hostile environment is different today than it was five years ago but often our security training doesn’t reflect this. It continues to prepare everyone for the same risk in the same way. Our updated HEAT e-learning course starts from a fundamentally different place: that risk is personal, and training should be too.

Deeply Personalised Learning

Our widely trusted HEAT e-learning course is built around the idea that effective security training has to meet people where they are. Every module is designed to get learners to think about their own environment, or the environment they’ll be entering, their decisions, and their risks. A new digital risk audit asks learners about where they work, what they do, and the specific factors that shape their exposure. This produces a personalised risk profile grounded in their real context, not a generic overview.

Every module is designed to get learners thinking about their own environment, their own decisions, and the specific risks they are most likely to face. The perspectives of women, people living with disabilities, LGBTQ+ communities, and others who may face heightened risk aren’t an add-on module but integrated into the fabric of the course. When learners understand that a colleague may experience the same checkpoint, the same curfew, or the same border crossing very differently to them, they become better colleagues, better team leaders, and better security focal points.

The perspectives of women, people living with disabilities, LGBTQ+ communities, and others who may face heightened risk aren’t an add-on module but integrated into the fabric of the course.

What's New

The 2026 refresh includes new content on threats from AI and emerging technology, the role of digital amplification in civil unrest, drones and airstrikes, resilience and self-care, harassment at borders and what happens if authorities seize your devices, alongside immersive, scenario-driven learning that places learners in tricky situations and asks them to think through decisions, not just select the "right" answer.

These are not abstract topics. AI-generated disinformation is already being used to manipulate information environments in contexts where humanitarian workers operate. Social media can escalate a local incident into a regional crisis in hours. Border crossings increasingly involve scrutiny of digital devices and online activity. The course prepares learners for the world as it is now, not as it was five years ago.

Learners leave with an expanded practical toolbox: checklists, aide-memoires, and quick-reference guides designed to reinforce learning long after the course ends. Our goal isn’t that learners complete the course, rather we want them to be better equipped.

The Impact So Far

Since 2021, more than 8,000 professionals across the social sector have completed our HEAT e-learning, with enrolment nearly doubling each year as organisations increasingly recognise the value of online training.  They work for NGOs, foundations, universities, and UN agencies. They are programme staff, researchers, logistics coordinators, many of whom would never have received hostile environment training at all under the traditional model of expensive, fly-in residential courses.

The shift has saved the sector an estimated £8.3 million in training costs and prevented potentially over 10,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. The course is available in multiple languages and can be completed anywhere with an internet connection.

As the sector faces historic funding pressure with programme closures, restructuring, and the loss of staff, these numbers matter. They represent the difference between extending genuine duty of care to every staff member facing risk, regardless of location, language, or budget, and limiting protection to those with the largest budgets.

Built for Where We Are Now

The humanitarian and development sector is navigating one of its most challenging periods. Teams are stretched. Environments are becoming more complex. The need for affordable, accessible, inclusive training that reflects the risks people actually face has never been greater.

This HEAT e-learning course was built for exactly this moment. It is how organisations demonstrate through action that they value the safety and wellbeing of every member of their team.

The sector has changed. The risks have changed. The question is whether your approach to keeping people safe has changed with them.

Want to learn more, get started or see a sample of the course? Contact us at operations@saferedge.com.