The Communication Initiative
Development action with informed and engaged societies
The Communication Initiative

After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com. 

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Adoption Ladder

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"Communication objectives directly address issues such as awareness, knowledge, attitude, practice, behaviour and participation. Each of these represents a communication level, which needs to be dealt with separately. If for instance your objective is to induce change in behaviour concerning personal hygiene practices, first you need to make the people concerned aware that there is a problem with the previous behaviour. You then make sure that the knowledge and the attitude necessary for the change to take place are present. It is only when all these prerequisites are met that you can hope to achieve your communication objectives.

In most instances change can be considered to be an innovation. Hence it can be dealt with as an adoption of innovation."

The Adoption Ladder process, as depicted in the figure below, shows the sequence of adoption and the various communication levels.


Awareness of the Problem: people must perceive there is a problem in the first place.

Interest: after being aware they need to show an interest in the specific problem;

Knowledge/comprehension: in order to decide to go for change and adopt an innovation, people need to be knowledgeable about it;

Attitude: attitude is another factor determining people's orientation in accepting and adopting an innovation;

Legitimisation: is the innovation in line with the norms and legal system of the community? This aspect is related to the overall legislation and policy currently in use. However it can also be related to the cultural and social acceptance of the innovation, and the fact of having to face strong peer pressure in order to adopt it; and

Practice: before actually adopting and putting in action an innovation people need to try it out in order to test its feasibility and effectiveness. Further actions might be needed to ensure its sustainability.

Click here to download a zipped PDF file (see pps. 19-20) from the FAO website for more information.
Source
SADC Centre of Communication for Development and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Second Edition 2004. "Participatory Communication Strategy Design: A Handbook" Chapter I: The Foundations of Communication Strategy Design [zipped PDF], pps 19-20 - click here to download.

Comments

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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/23/2006 - 18:23 Permalink

A good intro to the full document. Again (as per the problem tree) the FAO site is not easy to work with. To download the full document it is necessary to chose the Zip option (not PDF option) yet this is nto expplained and is not obvious.

Editor's note: Thank you for your comments. We have edited the text related to the link and hope that we have made this more clear.