Development action with informed and engaged societies

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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Reviewers Needed for 2018 SBCC Summit

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Dear Colleagues,

The Communication Initiative together with Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, BBCMA, UNICEF and the Soul City Institute for Social Justice are working with other partners to organise the 2018 International Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Summit featuring Entertainment Education.  The Summit is organized to better understand what works in shifting social norms, changing behaviors and in amplifying the voice of those who have most at stake in the success of development efforts. It is designed to wrestle with the profound issues of social justice and agenda setting that affect these decisions. Who decides, for example, what behaviors need changing or which norms should be shifted? How can people’s realities and voices be put at the center of such change? How much emphasis should be placed on shifting norms and behaviors when power structures, policy environments or lack of services may constitute problems that overwhelm the capacity of individuals or communities to act?

I am writing on behalf of the Summit Secretariat, to seek your participation.  We welcome the submission of abstracts and/or registrants to the Summit but also wanted to make a special appeal to The CIs University and Higher Education Network for abstract reviewers.

Each reviewer will be asked to review up to 10 abstracts between late November/mid December 2017. Each abstract will be approximately 500 words in length. Guidance will be provided about how to review abstracts.

If you are interested and/or know of others we have set up a Google doc into which you can enter the name, designation, and email address for yourself or others from within your organization or network that you recommend.  We need these names submitted by November 13, 2017 if possible (though we’ll keep the doc open for some time after that date). The Google doc can be accessed at this link.


We will confirm all volunteers’ willingness to participate before sending out review requests.

We will send out a few additional questions to all proposed re via Survey Monkey to everyone on the potential volunteers list to confirm their participation, and to help us match the reviewers' interests/experience with relevant abstracts.

We anticipate more than a thousand abstracts and three reviewers are needed for each. We hope to generate an initial list of 400 potential volunteers by Nov 13th to facilitate confirmation of reviewers in advance of the November 27th abstract submission deadline. Many hands make light work, so please do volunteer to help.

 Thank you and best regards,

Chris Morry for the 

SBCC Secretariat

Comments

Submitted by s_panda on Fri, 11/10/2017 - 06:33 Permalink

Dear Chris,

Iam interested to be a part of the review process during the period mentioned above as per the parameters set by the SBCC Secretariat.

With regards and best wishes for the summit.

Dr.Sadhu Charan Panda