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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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Thank you! Summit Communications

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To: The What Works? SBCC Summit Communications Group

cc: Summit Steering Committee and Secretariat

Best wishes. My apologies that this note has been delayed due to post-Summit priorities on other themes and a personal injury (am fully OK now!). 

I wanted to express my fulsome thanks for the work of everyone on the Communications Group for the Summit.

The fruits of your extensive work were plain to see in Nusa Dua. One of the highest priorities for the Communications group was to ensure that we attracted both a large number of people to Nusa Dua and a significant number of abstracts submissions in order that there was high quality content. Through our collective efforts the Communications group was an important reason for 1,200 people attending (significantly up on both Addis Ababa and Rome) and 1,266 abstract submissioms - from which the the 300 Summit presentations were chosen. This was also reflected in the social media posts and dialogue - here is a selection from Twitter. As you will see the dialogue continues. 

Thank you for all of your extremely important efforts. I did joke at one stage that with such high levels of registered participants and such a large number of abstract submissions we could probably call the Summit off and still call it a success given that level of engagement, which you played such a crucial part in creating and supporting. But of course the Summit itself was really important. 

The communications process has not ceased! We are very close to having the final Summit Declaration. A draft was presented in Nusa Dua. This was shared with all participants virtually and comments were requested. At this thread the draft Summit Declaration is shared, with about 50 comments on that draft submitted by participants post-Summit. When the final Summit Declaration is available we would be much obliged if you could communicate it widely to your memberships, networks and media contacts that would be great.

Thanks again - fantastic to work with everyone - more soon - Warren