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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Learning Clicks

5 comments

This month I have been working on compiling the DB Click: Health. Although Julie is an excellent trainer, I am still finding my way. I am thankful that Julie, Anja and Kier are there for guidance. It is not a difficult task, just takes time. (I am impatient) The Health Click goes out on Thursday, fingers crossed all goes well. I have a Children's click in the works as well. Each time I compile a click (this is my 3d one now) it gets a little faster, a little smoother.

Comments

Hi Dee,

I haven't seen all the behind-the-scenes work you have been doing with Julie's guidance to transition to this task, but from my vantage point, things seem really smooth. Nice work! In the future, if you need me to review the content before sending it to Jonathan, I would be happy to help out with that. It is always a good idea for us to be in close communication anyway so as to be sure we don't have too much overlap with Drum Beat, as we were reminded of this time around. Also, if you see summaries that are not yet placed on Global that you would like to include in a Click, just send them to me so that I can share them.

Thanks!
Kier

Submitted by aventh on Wed, 03/16/2016 - 07:02 Permalink

Hi Dea,

Will also keep the Clicks in mind as I plan my Soul Beats - they are only published every two months now and so far none are contract related.  Will try and keep away from health and child related topics for now. 

Anja

Hi Anja,

I don't know the process for gathering summaries for a SB.  The Childrens Click goes out on March 31st, then the Soul Beat on April 12th. I am wondering, content wise, if that would/could be a problem for you gathering summaries for the  SB? Or maybe that is not a huge concern?

Dee

Hi Dee,

What I have been doing is just click "edit" on a particular summary to see which theme sites it has been selected for; then I click "view" to get out of it without touching anything. (Before this version of Drupal, I would just look at the keywords, but now only about 10 of them are visible to me when I click on the 3 dots next to "Categories"...for example, when I go here and click on the 3 dots - https://www.comminit.com/global/content/impact-data-alive-thrive-ethiop… - I see only about 7 or 8 keywords. When Anja goes there, she sees 21 keywords, so she can tell which theme sites it is selected for. For some reason, I cannot, so I would have to go into the back end to check). Alternatively, if you just send me the list of items you plan to include in a Click, I can quickly check them all to see if I need to share anything. That would be no problem!

I don't think there is an easier way. Anja said this: "The only other way would be to select all the relevant (health or children) Global summaries in Admin (do that first as there are bound to be more) and then selecting only Soul Beat Summaries in admin and check whether there are some in the SB list that are not in the CI list." I am not sure about that, so I think I would just stick to looking at individual summaries.

Hope that helps,
Kier