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.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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Accion 17

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Acción 17 is a virtual community of journalists, communicators, human rights experts, teachers, and students interested in reflecting on, stimulating the exchange of ideas about, and spreading public information related to childhood and adolescence - and the intersection of these populations with the media. Acción 17 uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) in an effort to create a strong international alliance working to enrich the practice of communication around child rights issues in Latin America.
Communication Strategies
The Acción 17 website (Portuguese and Spanish languages only) is a "free membership club" that is designed to work as a virtual meeting space for people and activists interested and committed to high-quality and socially responsible journalism. It includes:
  • Personal Pages. Each registered user has access to a personal page that enables the publication or editing of documents (written by the user or by third parties). This content can be shared with the entire community for evaluation or discussion purposes. Personal pages also provide individual profiles and subjects of interest to the users in order to facilitate interaction among members.
  • Discussion Forums. Through these spaces created to promote thematic debate, users can express their opinions and questions about issues that either they, or the project coordination team, raise.
  • Virtual Dialogue. This chat tool is specially aimed at the exchange of experiences and the promotion of debates with the participation of experts on specific subjects.
  • Library. Documents, reports and statistics on childhood and adolescence from the diverse countries that compose the Acción 17 community are available for users, who also are encouraged to submit research results and relevant papers.
  • Surveys. Opinion polls on provocative subjects are frequently carried out. The objective of these surveys is to stimulate participation, to give visibility to certain topics, to assess users' points of view, and to understand the regional perspective.
Development Issues
Children, Rights
Key Points
Acción 17 is an effort to draw communicators into the process of making concrete Article 17 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In this chapter, States "recognize the important role performed by the mass media and shall ensure that children have access to information and material from a diversity of national and international sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health" and commit to "encourage the development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her well-being."
Partners

Acción 17 was originally conceived by UNICEF TACRO and is developed by ANDI (Agencia de Noticias por los Derechos de la Infancia de Brasil).

Sources

Electronic magazine sent to La Iniciativa de Comunicaci