Child rights 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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Secretariat Group Meeting Agendas and Notes

3 comments

This is the section that contains the agendas and notes from the Secretariat Group meetings. Please access files below to for agendas and notes. Please use the comments section below to ask questions or make observations. These will be sent by email direct to everyone in this group as well as being included in the thread below. 

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Submitted by Warren Feek on Wed, 10/18/2017 - 13:33 Permalink

Hi - attached when you click on "Please review and Comment through Reply" above is the agenda for the Summit Secretariat call on October 19th (10am PST). If there are any Qs or comments please use the comments facility. 

Hi folks - Chris and I chatted this afternoon afer the meeting yesterday. Just a couple of things for further review or clarification if we can.

1. Steering Group and fees - the notes accurately reflect our discussion "Clarified that Secretariat members are expected to pay for registration. Steering Committee members encouraged to do so as possible – will be taken up on organizational basis as needed." But, I wonder if we can formalise that a bit more in order to avoid any hesitancy or mis-communication. For those of us with revenue in the budget for the Summit (attached - assume we will see 1st phase agreements soon) the fee is not such a big deal. For large organisations this will be OK. But maybe we can now identify and excuse from the Summit fees some of the smaller orgs that are putting so much time into the Summit. They will potentially being donating a lot of hours (maybe more) for planning the Summit with no reimbursement of time costs; and then a week of work at the Summit, again possibly with no revenue line for this in their own budgets; plus the potential of travel costs etc. It is lot if you have no specific revenue line for this work. On a related side-note - I am sure I just missed this - we did agree early on (check) an honorararium ($3,000?) for people from Southern orgs engaged in the Steering Committee? If someone can identify that line in the full budget that would be excellent - perhaps it was right in front of me?

2. The Indonesia group - thanks again for the clear notes from the meeting yesterday. I am still a bit confused by the focus and composition of the Indonesia 'local" group. There was mention in our call of a focus on the entertainment, receptions etc, by that local group but I suspect that they will require a broader remit. Just to clarify whether the intention was to restrict engagement to JHU, UNICEF and the government. That was the impression we gained when the offer of looking for someone in The CI network in Indonesia was, I guess, rejected! But if there si agreemnt that the local group role will not stay within the more limited role presently envisgaed then perhaps we should engage a few more Indonesian actors for a fuller range of perspectives across our field of work.

Hope those make sense. Thanks - Warren