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.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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KidFamilia Project - Brazil

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KidFamilia is a Brazil-based project designed to stimulate the development of "virtual families" by bringing poor, socially deprived children together with wise elders. Elders are asked to act as surrogate family members to children participating in the Kidlink House (KHouse) Internet centres project (click here for a Programme Description). Following training, elders use email and the internet to share advice about their past experiences and to inspire kids to look hopefully toward the future. The purpose of the intergenerational project is to build elders' self-esteem and openness to new technology, while fostering healthy relationships in the lives of needy children. An added goal is to promote respect for, and attention to, the ageing population in Brazil.
Communication Strategies
KidFamilia's strategy for providing elders with motivation to face the challenges involved in learning how to use new technology is to ask them to mentor individual computer-using KHouse children. In other words, by using the excuse of inviting the elderly to provide words of wisdom to needy youth, Kidlink is working to encourage ageing people to use new technology.

Specifically, in the first phase, the elderly build their technological literacy by taking computer courses offered by KHouse. Then, the elder participants are invited to use their new skills to communicate with young people through email-based list servers and internet bulletin boards. In this way, an intergenerational community is built in which elderly people "adopt" socially deprived children (who may not otherwise have a sense of family or enjoy much affection). The skills these elders learn might also be transferrable to relationships with their own grandchildren.
Development Issues
Ageing, Children, Technology.
Key Points
According to S. Papert's book The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap (Atlanta, GA, USA: Longstreet Press 1996 - cited in "Project KidFamily KBr: Democratizing the Internet, Socializing the Poor Youth and Recovering the Self-Esteem of the Third Age"), parents/adults must recognise the need for constructing new forms of relationship with their children. To that end, they may look to the computer as a tool for, rather than an obstacle to, the union of the family/community. Parents/adults, he says, must worry less about what their children are doing with the computer, and spend more time trying to find common interests or projects to share with children. The idea consists of using the natural enthusiasm of children for computers as a basis for the creation of a "family learning culture". Although it extends the definition of "family", KidFamilia is based on this philosophy.
Sources

"Project KidFamily KBr: Democratizing the Internet, Socializing the Poor Youth and Recovering the Self-Esteem of the Third Age", by Marisa Lucena, on theKidFamilia site.