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Soul Beat Africa
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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Big Structure Working Group

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This group is presently made up of Sonali Khan, Caroline Jacobs and Chris Morry with support from Radhika Kumar.

It's main goal is to draft the program agenda and the structure for the various forms of discussion as outlined by the types of abstracts being called for, the featured Entertainment Education component, spaces for Coms Talks, open and 'blue sky' discussions, posters, multi-media and other elements ensuring there is space for everything including creativity and innovation.

It convenes once a week by conference call on Tuesday and feeds the outcomes of its discussions to the Program Committee where there is further discussion ad refinement before reporting to the Secretariat.

Attached are the key documents - notes from meetings and agendas.

file_9496500_38097.docx
file_9496500_37764.docx
file_9496500_37591.docx
file_9496500_37590.docx
file_9496500_37589.docx

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Submitted by Radhika Kumar on Tue, 10/31/2017 - 05:58 Permalink

Program Big Structure Meeting | 24th October

Attendees: Chris Morry, Caroline Jacoby, Sonali Khan, Radhika Kumar

 

Discussion Points:

·        

Knowledge management – Need to improve the knowledge management and communications within the Program Committee and between the sub-sub groups. We can leverage the CI platform to do this. Let’s all use the CI platform to upload the weekly meeting minutes, and house all the information from our sub-group in one place.

 

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Internal Communication – We should prioritize improving internal communications between the program committee, and also the program committee with the Secretariat and other sub-committees.

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Do we have a person from each sub-committee sitting on the other sub-committee for cross committee learning?

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How are we feeding are questions and input into the Secretariat? The Thursdays Secretariat meetings can be a platform to do this.

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Chris- It should be added to the agenda item for the Secretariat meeting

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How are we closing on decisions?

 

Program Structure

 

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Realizing that there is only so far we can go without the content (abstracts), how do we approach things like EE, internal communications around the conference (participatory, digital), skill sessions, plenary .

 

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Education Entertainment – Do we want to dedicate a day (Wednesday) to this? Or do we also want it to be on-going with multiple touchpoints throughout the conference? How are we approaching this? ‘the future of EE’, gamification, reality shows, comedy, social, digital, virtual reality, research around brain chemistry and EE. How do we incorporate a multi-media showcase?

 

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Plenaries – We can have two, one at the start of the day and one at the end (shorter, more reflections oriented/ social media engagement/ participation)

 

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Apart from the abstract based sessions, can we curate sessions that address the ‘big problems.’ Need some more thinking around this, how can we structure these? We can go through the agenda from last time and pick up issue areas that beg for more conclusive discussion. What are the fields that we cannot avoid? Can we structure a conversation around this? Can we be provocative? This is more of a December discussion.

 

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Using an app at the conference – This will be a good, digital way of engaging attendees, and also managing logistics/ housekeeping announcements. Radhika will share the learnings from the app Dasra used for an event in September.( Logistics, live polling , feedback, debate session, audience feedback)

 

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Skilling Sessions: How can we make this a very rich experience? We create 1-2 such spaces where we allow a four hour slot. We guide them through that curated session.

 

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Blue sky sessions- How are we envisioning this? We need some open spaces in the conference venue to host these. Blue Sky vs Red Sky. What are doing right, what are we doing wrong? What can we do better as a sector?  What can we do better?

 

·        

How do we allow groups to organically form and meet at the conference? For instance, if 30 people in South Africa, all working in gender violence want to meet up – How do we provide for this? Attendees should also be able to schedule and have meetings with others they want to connect with at the conference.