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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Civil Society, Community Participation and Empowerment in the Era of Globalisation

1 comment

Author

  • Marilyn Waring
"Civil society organisations (CSOs) are often perceived as being best suited to foster participative forms of development, which in turn helps empower those trying to overcome poverty. But are CSOs the only purveyor of participatory development?"

Published by the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), the author of this 8-page paper asserts that the development work of civil society organisations must be complemented with a rights-based approach in order to generate participatory forms of development. With public and private donors moving away from the rights agenda, participatory development is not having its intended effects.

Publishers

Publication Date
Languages

English

Number of Pages

8

Source

e-CIVICUS 232, October 29 2004; AWID website.

PDFLink
http://www.awid.org/publications/OccasionalPapers/spotlight1.pdf

Comments

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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 01/12/2005 - 05:04 Permalink

The PDF format said error in opeing this document file cannot be found. Therefore very disappointing I am unable to read the document.

Editor's note: We are sorry that you experienced difficulties, but we are not able to replicate the error here. The PDF downloads easily for everyone working on The CI.