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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Popular Education Collective (PEC) - Zimbabwe

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PEC was registered as a social welfare organisation in 1983 with the primary aim of making information on democracy, business management and other social development issues available in simple English that could be easily understood by adults with basic education. PEC's aim is to facilitate participatory community-based civic education programmes and produce appropriate materials that addresses the needs of marginalised men and women.
Communication Strategies

PEC has published books on training and civic education as well as a bi-monthly magazine on the same topics. The organisation conducted training in business management for community groups and ran a rural mobile library scheme.

In its current civic education programme PEC is conducting community -based workshops in Masvingo and Manicaland. The workshops are on good governance, choosing effective leaders, citizen participation, non-violence and tolerance, transparency and accountability. In the first year of its programme (2000) there will be 24 community-based workshops. Followed by 48 in 2001 and the same number in 2002. Civic education materials such as posters, leaflets, T-shirts, stickers etc. will be produced on the above topics.

A monthly electronic version of Read On magazine will be launched. This will be connected to rural focal points. The rural focal points will print the text version of the publication and disseminate it to the organisation's constituency as described in this proposal.
Development Issues

Political Development.
Key Points

The organisation intends to lobby government and other stakeholders, through networks that it is part of, on the need for civic education in Zimbabwe and its recognition as an important ingredient to the country's development. The stakeholders will include the community, civil society, the private sector, donors and government ministries. In the civil society groups the stakeholders will be NGOs community based organisations, farmers associations, churches, women's and youth groups, political parties, consumer groups etc. In the community the programme targets villagers, the unemployed, farm and rural workers, traditional leaders such as village heads and informal leaders.

As civic organisation, PEC would like to play a key role in the way governance develops in Zimbabwe especially making it more inclusive to the needs of ordinary men and women. Among other things, PEC would like to act as a mediator between conflicting interests and nurture citizen values that are a prerequisite for democracy to prevail.
Sources

PEC Executive Summary - Dated July 24 2001.