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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Published 23 years ago
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Conclusion [Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Prevention Campaign]

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Summary

As a strategy for communication, I see creative traditional dance as having immense potential to increase people's participation and hopefully initiate social change because:

  • As an innovation, it is not new and compatible with the cultural values of theTaita people thus easily adaptable (Rodgers, 1995).
  • It has the potential to be more pervasive, persuasive, persistent, personal, and popular.
  • It has the potential for being democratic in that the people can play an active role in producing and distributing their own messages.
  • It is cheap and best since all it needs is appropriating of human resources, which is plentiful in Wongonyi, Taita/Taveta.
  • It is capable of being more effective since it uses interpersonal channels that have been found to have more impact in rural communities than the mediated channels of electronic and print media (Zakes, 1993).


It is my hope that this study will stimulate interest in Taita (African) traditional dance and performance ethnography, which insists on face-to-face encounters instead of abstractions and reductions (Turner, 1986), as a method that has immense potential in adding new knowledge to the communication discipline, especially in aspects that cannot be narrowed to a language that can be written or measured and counted.