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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Open Knowledge Hub and Soul Beat Africa

3 comments

Hi CI team,

Our contract with the Okhub project http://www.okhub.org/ comes to an end at the end of March.   Although the funding for the overall project and the work with partners has ended, the Okhub will continue to exist and our HIV/AIDS knowledge will continue to be fed onto the Hub to be used by Eldis and any other partners and users of the Hub.  I enjoyed working on this project and learned a lot about Open Data and the challenges of Open Data, and it was great to meet people from around the world (from Costa Rica to Fiji) doing similar work to us. 

Cheers, Anja

Comments

Hi Anja,

I knew about this project of yours when I had the opportunity to take a look at a draft of your Soul Beat, and you explained the concept very clearly there. I don't yet understand exactly how your HIV content gets fed directly into their process, but I assume that some kind of automated flow is happening. I agree with you about how fulfilling it can be to communicate with people across the globe and to learn a bit about how they approach things.

~ Kier

Submitted by cmorry on Wed, 03/16/2016 - 09:24 Permalink

Hi Anja

Thanks for this quick overview.  I also remember reading the Feb Soul Beat about this project and thinking that we have a number of projects like this that can help teach us things about the work we do - whether it be things like Open Access and what worked and what didn't or the challenges of working in the realm of social media which the Ukraine experience may tell us.  Perhaps this space and these groups once we get them running will provide a tool that let's us learn from each other's experience a little better.

Cheers