By Isaac Gomes
On Saturday December 6, the Social Communications Commission
of the Archdiocese of Calcutta conducted an Alignment Programme for the
resource persons tasked with assisting parishes start their own Parish papers. The
programme was held at the Diocesan Pastoral Centre, Proggoloy, Barasat.
The Commission had felt the need to have parish papers in
every parish, to initiate parish media teams which would be valuable resources
to the archdiocesan media effort in the long term. A series of workshops to
train these parish teams and bring out parish journals would be held in early
2015.
Towards this plan, the Alignment programme brought together
those resource people would act as facilitators for workshops to be held early
next year, and subsequent be hand-holders of the parish media teams to create
and publish their papers, with in a time bound period. For Phase I, fifteen
city parishes in Kolkata were identified.
The resource team of Fr. Devraj Fernandes, Farrell Shah,
Althea Phillips, Ruth Joseph and Isaac Gomes, started from Archbishop’s House
at 7.45 am for Proggoloy, and were joined there by Fr. Robin Gomes and Fr. Leo
Jayaraj. After a hearty breakfast, the
programme began with a very encouraging address by Fr Anthony Roderick, head of
the centre. He requested that the team
from Kolkata give some tips on writing for a parish newspaper and reporting, to
a delegation of about 25 Church leaders from Bongaon Parish. Farrell and Isaac had half-an-hour
interactive session with the delegates and explained the nuances of reporting
in a church journal. Farrell explained
to them the formula of What, When, Why, Where, How and Who with an amusing poem;
for ensuring completeness in their report writing. The delegates put up a short demonstration
and proved they were quick learners!
When the Bongaon delegates had left, the SCC facilitators
began their “training for trainers” in earnest.
Fr. Devraj took the first session - an overview of
Communication in the Church, especially the Church’s media Mission. He said social media reporting should be
truthful, just and at the service of common good. He quoted from various Church
documents including the utterances of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the
message of Pope Francis on 48th World Communication Day.
The remaining sessions were led by Farrell, who outlined the
objectives of the workshops and asked the group to identify the types of media available
for Parish Journalism. Through group exercise, the participants identified the pros
and cons of each media option (Newspaper, Websites, Social Media and Verbal
Communication, etc). He stressed on the
necessity of involving the youth, where media can be a vehicle to express
themselves - and for creating a pool of future-ready media persons for the
Archdiocese.
Session III was on creating Parish-relevant Contents (PREPS)
for various media, Team Skills and Techniques and the economics of church
newspaper publication.
The Workshop ended with a highly creative session on
assembling an editorial and design team, writing articles, choosing a name for
a publication, technical and mandatory issues, and finally publishing - there
and then - a newspaper on the tab, with “Editor” Fr Robin’s autograph clearly
visible!
We hope the facilitator team can take the input obtained
today and translate it into effective parish journals in the New Year.
No comments:
Post a Comment