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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Polio Country Profile Pages

2 comments

Hi Team, Since January, I have been doing research to create profile pages of countries where polio communication is critical at this time: Afghanistan, Laos, Madagascar, and Ukraine. This involved doing a lot of research both online and through email communication, especially with Ellen Coates. I have learned so much about the situation in these countries and was privy to some internal documents that may never have seen the light of day outside the issuing organisations (we will not provide access to these documents, but I was able to use them in writing the profiles). I also wrote several summaries. By Feb. 29th, I was able to get draft write-ups to Chris and Warren for each of the 4 countries. I am currently waiting to hear feedback but the hope is that we will have finalised the content in March and have created a block providing links to these country profiles. Ideally, I can have everything in place to have a Drum Beat ready by April 20th. ~ Kier

Comments

Submitted by cmorry on Tue, 03/15/2016 - 09:35 Permalink

Hi Everyone

Kier has been doing a great job on these profiles especially given the variation in content types and amounts of information across the countries.  Warren and I are both looking at the excellent work she's done as the basis for taking our next steps.

We also hope to keep to the timeline that Kier has mentioned above so watch out for some Polio Country Profile Pages in the near future.

Cheers

Chris