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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.
 
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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AIDS in Two Cities

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Launched on the eve of World AIDS Day (December 1) 2006, this photography-based advocacy initiative is designed to communicate the humanity that people in the so-called "North" and "South" share when it comes to experiences such as living with HIV/AIDS. Panos Canada is a Canadian non-governmental organisation (NGO) working on pluralism, media, human security, international justice, and peacebuilding. Working in collaboration with Panos Caribbean and AIDS Vancouver, Panos Canada commissioned a series of photos in two cities - Port au Prince, Haiti and Vancouver, Canada - as part of this effort to challenge the "North-South" paradigm for viewing development, and to sketch, instead, a "commonalities" lens that illustrates the shared human impacts of, and community responses to, HIV/AIDS in seemingly antithetical environments.
Communication Strategies

"AIDS in Two Cities" draws on the medium of photography to spark public dialogue, and generate understanding, about what we all share (no matter whether we are living in an industrialised or developing nation) when it comes to HIV/AIDS. Posted online, the Panos-Canada-commissioned photo-analysis by artist Pieter de Vos is an designed to show that - "[a]s useful as it has been for development and social justice movements, the North-South lens is now dangerously misleading, because it is state-based not people-based....Seen through the commonalities lens, AIDS looks remarkably similar in one of the richest and in one of the poorest cities in the world." The photographs of individuals in both Haiti and Canada are meant to communicate such facts as this: the anti-retroviral drugs that can keep HIV-positive people alive are readily available to the wealthy, but not to the economically poor. Organisers acknowledge that Haiti has a far greater proportion of people who are living in absolute poverty than does Canada, but explain that - while their numbers differ - their situations do not. The photographs available for viewing here are meant to illustrate this.

Development Issues

HIV/AIDS.

Partners

Panos Canada, Panos Caribbean, and AIDS Vancouver.

Sources

The Drum Beat, Issue 401; and AIDS in Two Cities page on the Panos Canada website.

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