The Communication Initiative
Development action with informed and engaged societies
The Communication Initiative
As of March 15 2025, The Communication Initiative (The CI) platform is operating at a reduced level, with no new content being posted to the global website and registration/login functions disabled. (La Iniciativa de Comunicación, or CILA, will keep running.) While many interactive functions are no longer available, The CI platform remains open for public use, with all content accessible and searchable until the end of 2025. 

Please note that some links within our knowledge summaries may be broken due to changes in external websites. The denial of access to the USAID website has, for instance, left many links broken. We can only hope that these valuable resources will be made available again soon. In the meantime, our summaries may help you by gleaning key insights from those resources. 

A heartfelt thank you to our network for your support and the invaluable work you do.
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The Drum Beat 45 - The Communication Initiative

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45
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The normal focus of a Drum Beat is on sharing the excellent and inspiring communication initiatives being undertaken by skilled and committed people and organisations covering all levels of communication action - interpersonal, family, community, provincial, national and international. 

In this Drum Beat I hope that you will allow us to focus on some of the recent developments at The Communication Initiative to improve our support to your work. These include discussion fora, one stop search, Forum and Partners meeting, Vacancies, Events, Consultants, and a new Home Page design. Our strategy is to become a mini-portal and connection facility for people and organisations active and interested in communication for development. 

1. ONE STOP-SEARCH

It can be time consuming and frustrating to search the web for the information you require. To address this issue for communication and development, we have begun the process of "ring-fencing" a number of relevant sites which you can search in one step. You are linked directly to those sites. This includes all of the Partner sites. A number of others have also been added. We will add more - please recommend sites that you suggest we include. The ONE STOP SEARCH works for both the CUSTOM SEARCH facility and the key word search. There is an option to search all of the sites or just The C.I. site. By way of example, a search of The C.I. site for "Senegal" produces 29 Results. When the "ring-fenced" sites are included there are 246 matches. 

Within the C.I. site there are now over 3,000 pages of information. Issues covered include: HIV/AIDS, Poverty, Gender, Children, Young People, Health, Environment, Education, and Rights. From a programming perspective you can search for Programme Descriptions, Impact Data, Communication Trends, Interviews, Planning Models, Change Theories, Consultant Information, Strategic Thinking, and much more. 

2. COMMUNICATION CHAT FORA

Fields of work change, develop and improve when peers communicate, debate and discuss. That is a central principle for the work of The C.I. To help advance that process we have established a number of email Communication Chat fora on key themes. These are summarised below. To become involved, subscribe online. All contributions are stored and threaded on the web site for easy reference. The fora which have just been established include:

  1. NEWS AND INFORMATION - The gathering point for people and organisations using NEWS AND INFORMATION strategies.

     
  2. ENTERTAINMENT - The gathering point for people and organisations using ENTERTAINMENT based strategies. 

     
  3. STRATEGIC THINKING - The gathering point for people wishing to share, discuss and debate the most appropriate and best value overall communication STRATEGIES to address the highest priority development issues. 

     
  4. EVALUATION AND RESEARCH - The gathering point for people and organisations involved in RESEARCH and EVALUATION related to communication, development and change programmes, trends and issues. 

     
  5. CONSULTANTS - The gathering point for people and organisations providing consultancy services related to communication, development and change issues, programmes and trends. 

     
  6. WEB-DEVELOPERS - The gathering point for people and organisations developing web sites and other internet based services on international development themes 

     

For further details please see the explanatory note that leads off each discussion. 

We intend these fora to be helpful for: problem-solving; information-seeking; people-seeking; trend-sharing; knowledge-building; and, experience-sharing. 

Please suggest new themes relevant to your work. 

This facility is available to your organisation to use for any CUSTOMISED DISCUSSION groups that you wish to establish and facilitate. Contact Warren Feek to discuss. 

3. FORUM AND PARTNERS MEETING 

The 2nd Communication Initiative Forum and 3rd Partners Meeting will be hosted by The Rockefeller Foundation [through Densie Gray-Felder, Vice President Communications at Rockefeller and Chair of The C.I. Partners group] in New York, May 15-17, 2000. The Partners Meeting [May 17] will review action to date and establish future direction and priorities. The Forum [May 15/16] will focus the Partners and other organisations present on discussion and debate of two major communication, development and social change themes:

[i] The Practice of Communication for Social Change [May 15] - including an overview and strategic implications summary by Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron based on 50 case studies, from many parts of the world, that he has collected and assessed [supported by The Rockefeller Foundation].

[ii] Knowledge, Scale, New Technology [May 16] - whose knowledge? how to get to scale? what value from the new technologies? how can these three relate? This will include an opening perspective from James Deane [Executive Director The Panos Institute London].

4. VACANCIES

The Vacancies service now includes 25 currently available posts. More are being received on a regular basis. Please check this part of the site regularly for additions. Two that are new include:

  1. World Health Organisation - Geneva - conceptualise, co-ordinate and monitor the work of WHO for the prevention of Mother-to-Child-Transmission of HIV Contact Dr Monir Islam Fax 41 22 791 4189 islamm@who.int 

     
  2. The Change Project/AED - Senior Program Officer - Washington D.C. - primary activities are development and field application of tools and approaches for changing behavior. As a member of the project's core staff, participate in strategic, technical and management decisions. Contact employ@aed.org fax (202) 884-8709

Please send your Vacancy notices for us to distribute through our channels email wfeek@comminit.com 

5. EVENTS

The Events Calendar is a place to list your events [conferences, training, symposium, workshops, etc]. Many events have recently been added. Three forthcoming events include:

  • Entertainment-Education Conference - September 17 - 23, 2000; Papendal, near Arnhem, The Netherlands.

     
  • Gender, Human Rights - Sexuality And HIV: New Challenges For Women In Prevention, Care, Support - July 9 and 14 - Durban - South Africa [part of the XII International AIDS Conference]

     
  • Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice - May 3 - 5, 1999 - Malaga, Spain 
     

Please send your Events for us to list and distribute through our channels email wfeek@comminit.com 

6. CONSULTANTS

This is an opportunity for organisations seeking consultants to review possible people to support their work and for consultants to describe their experience and skills. 94 consultants are presently registered in the "Exchange". Each has one and a half pages of information and contact details. Information on consultants relevant to your search will also appear when those searches take place eg - consultants with expertise on gender when there is a gender related search. Consultants recently added include:

  • Guillermo Brea
  • Ami Becker
  • Guillaume Mukenge Bakadi

If you are a consultant and wish to be listed please email wfeek@comminit.com 

7. HOME PAGE DESIGN

There is a new Home page design - set up as mini-portal site - hopefully with easier navigation and functionality [please let us know]. Material on the home page will change on a regular basis - both items within each section and the addition of new sections and special features. 

8. WEB SITE USAGE and NETWORK NUMBERS 

By way of background the statistics for use of the web site for the month of March 2000 include: 18,849 user sessions from 6,780 unique hosts in 101 countries with each user staying on the site an average of 23 minutes. There are now 6,523 people in the network database. 

THANKS - Please provide us with feedback on this support and ideas to improve the process. Next week it is back to your work!

***

The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com

To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, see our policy.

To subscribe, click here.

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