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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HC3 SBCC Summit DB Work

2 comments

Hi Team, As most of you know, the SBCC Summit was in February, and the content team posted many of the abstracts and summarised some of the presentations. In addition to participating in this summarisation, I pulled together a Drum Beat highlighting some of the content from the Summit. Kim Martin reviewed and is on board with it, so I will publish it on the 23rd. It seemed like there was some great material to emerge, but I'm guessing you really had to be there in order to really benefit from the full presentations (PPTs can be so skeletal) and discussions that took place there. After this, there is only one more Drum Beat contractually obligated within this HC3 contract period, which I think might focus on family planning or nutrition/child survival. We should have plenty of content from which I can choose. ~ Kier

Comments

Hi Dee,

Thanks for thinking ahead. The second HC3 DB will be, at the latest, DB 716 - July 20 2016 (to allow for August invoice). There will be, I think, both a Children and Health Click in May and a Children and Health Click in July - so this will definitely be tricky. I will start anticipating our need for children content that does not have anything to do with HC3 in case that will help us. We will surely need to be in touch about content overlap as things progress.

~ Kier