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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Research Study on the Level of Sustainability of NGOs in Brazil working on HIV/AIDS

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This study was carried out by John Snow do Brasil and PROMUNDO and received funding from USAID, FHI, and the Brazilian Ministry of Health.

This study has the objective to present the main institutional characteristics of civil society organisations (CSOs) in Brazil, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), associations, cooperatives, among other similar organisations developing HIV/AIDS related activities and projects in Brazil. The work of these organisations has contributed to the control of the epidemic among specific intended populations around the country in recent years. This is the main reason why all partners participating in this initiative decided to assess their strategic approaches, the main characteristics of their staff, strategies used for leveraging resources and their main community-based activities.

These institutional aspects were correlated into different sustainability categories presented by this study as: organisational capital, financial capital, technical/human resources capital, and social capital. The correlation of all these types of capital facilitates the process to identifying the level of institutional sustainability of all entities included in this research; in other words, their capacity to disseminate and replicate efficiently their activities.

Based on quantitative and qualitative research methods, these four categories are analysed. These findings contribute for better understanding of the work developed by the CSOs/AIDS in Brazil. Finally, a ranking based on the institutional sustainability index found for all CSOs included in this resesarch is presented. The ranking includes observations and comments related to the performance of organisations with low and high sustainability levels.

Thus, this report was subdivided into four parts:
  • Introduction - It includes an overview of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Brazil and around the world, the main policies and programmatic approaches toward prevention and assistance, the main theoretical aspects for developing the study, and a brief description of the methodology used.
  • Main Characteristics of all CSOs included in this research - It addresses questions such as: Who are they? How they leverage resources for their programmes and activities? What are their main target populations?
  • CSO' Institutional Sustainability Index Analysis - It presents the sustainability indexes (from 0,000 to 1,000) for all organisations included in this research and a narrative of the main findings from the qualitative research conducted during the implementation of the project.
  • Conclusions and Recommendations - In this final part of the report, a list of the main conclusions related to the data presented and final (follow-on) recommendations are included.
The final report is available in Portuguese only.