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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Working with Men, Responding to AIDS

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Subtitle
Gender, Sexuality and HIV - A Case Study Collection
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance has produced this collection of thirteen case studies in an effort to help education and prevention programmes conduct work with men on HIV/AIDS issues. It presents experiences and lessons from a range of different projects (some supported by the Alliance and some not) that are working with men. By showcasing experiences and lessons from the field in the form of case studies, this collection hopes to offer inspiration, ideas, and models for working with men in different cultural environments.

The case studies describe not only HIV/AIDS projects that are working with men, but also other kinds of projects that address other issues and problems relating to men (for example, gender identity, sexuality, violence). The aim of including this range of case studies is to show that:
  • HIV/AIDS is connected to many other issues in the lives of men, and it is possible to have an impact on the epidemic by working with men on these related issues.
  • Different kinds of men face many different needs and problems - "in order to do effective HIV/AIDS work with such men, it will often be necessary to work on these needs and problems as well".
  • HIV/AIDS projects that are currently working with men, or interested in working with men, can learn from the experiences of projects that have successfully worked with men on other issues and problems.
The case studies are based on information gathered from a questionnaire that was sent to the projects concerned and from written materials that were available. The final selection of case studies reflects not only the intention to showcase a range of innovative work but also the self-selection of projects that chose to respond to the questionnaire. Case studies from Latin America are not included in this collection, as the author felt that sufficient numbers of these are already represented in other publications (references to these publications are provided in the resources section at the end of this collection).

According to the publication, in most cases, there were little or no evaluation data available on the projects. "This collection, therefore, does not attempt to define best practice in relation to the work of these projects. Instead, the emphasis is on drawing lessons from such work that will stimulate thinking on different ways of working with men."

The case studies come from projects located in Bangladesh, Belarus, Botswana, Bulgaria, India, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, South Africa, and Zambia.

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Publication Date
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68

Source

Posting to the Gender-AIDS listserv, November 17 2003, and AIDSPortal website, April 29 2010, and email from Kate Gerrard to The Communication Initiative on May 4 2010.

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