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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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Published 14 years ago
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Expansion of HIV Prevention, Counseling, Psychosocial Support and Outreach Service

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Summary

Since 2004, Pathfinder International has worked to support HIV-positive antenatal women, new mothers, and people living with HIV and AIDS in Botswana. 

Based on the result of a five-year project, a second five-year award from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was provided to continue HIV prevention, counseling, psychosocial support, and outreach services in Botswana. This project is building on the first by expanding existing services and scaling up interventions to reach new areas. The project is being implemented in collaboration with experienced local partner non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and in coordination with stakeholders such as the Ministry of Health.

The first CDC-funded project (2004-2009) was developed to address the many challenges associated with the prevention of mother-to-child-transmission of HIV and AIDS in Botswana. Specifically, the project sought to improve male involvement, increase the number of newborns tested for HIV, encourage people to disclose their HIV status, and challenge tradition beliefs that hinder safe infant feeding.

By the end of year five, 78 government health facilities were providing peer-mother counseling programs to pregnant women and new mothers, and 12,211 HIV-positive mothers were registered with the peer-mother counseling program. These clients were provided psychosocial support and counseling services on safer sex, feeding options, reduction of unplanned pregnancies, stigma reduction, baby testing, partner testing, and adherence to preventative mother-to-child-transmission and antiretroviral (ARV) protocols.      

Throughout the project male involvement has been encouraged. Assistance was provided to local NGOs with the development of ‘Male Groups’ designed to promote male-volunteerism and male peer-education sessions. A rapid assessment done in February 2010 indicated that since the close of the programme, men are more aware of the risks of casual sex and multiple concurrent partnerships, are more focused on gender-related issues, and are less likely to engage in sexual violence.

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Source

Pathfinder International Programs website, January 14 2012.

Comments

Submitted by jturner277 on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 19:50 Permalink

The concept of HIV cases are found common around the world, still yet medical experts are unable to found perfect solution of this diseases, therefore experts are believe that people suffered from HIV positive issues are run towards death so they used to designed various programs to make aware people about the horrible condition of HIV positive which may lead towards AIDS.

Basically in African countries where HIV cases are more often common as compare to other regions and countries so therefore a number of NGO (non government organization) and Ministry of Health also introduce many programs to prevent HIV positive and support the victims with fair services.

 

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