Delegates from across Asia Pacific gathered in Melbourne for a three-day meeting recently, sharing experiences and building bridges between the diverse social communication works in the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific.
The director of Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN) and the founder of Jesuit Communications Australia, Fr Michael Kelly SJ, joined the delegates for the first day of the meeting. Fr Kelly spoke about the Catholic publishing landscape in Australia, and the establishment of publications such as Eureka Street and Australian Catholics. He also provided some input to delegates on how to build the communication ministries in their own provinces.
“Fr Kelly spoke about how building a successful communications ministry brings together a range of skills,” said Jesuit Communications Australia senior editor Michael McVeigh, who organised the meeting along with JCAP Coordinator for Social Communications Fr Nono Alfonso SJ. “You have to understand your audiences and how best to reach them, develop great content, find partners you can work with and ways to generate revenue.”
Fr Jerry Martinson SJ of Kuangchi Program Service in Taiwan agrees. “When we express our mission, when we express our ideas, we have to focus on the needs of the people – -of our audience. And most of us who have been doing media for a long time understand that, but sometime we tend to forget,” he said. “We tend to say what we want to say, but we have to focus it, frame it, introduce it within the context of people’s interests and needs.”
The delegates shared some of the highlights of their own communication activities over the last year, and held a movie night during which Fr Nono showed a video they produced of the papal visit to the Philippines and Fr Martinson shared a shorter English version of the Giuseppe Castiglione SJ documentary that had aired on China’s national TV network.
The meeting, which was held from June 29 to July 1, also included a session with Andrew Yule and Kate Colvin from Jesuit Social Services, who spoke about how communication and advocacy can work together to influence public policy. That meeting was followed by a visit to the Jesuit Social Services’ Artful Dodgers Studios, where the planned tour turned into a performance of hip-hop songs by the young people in the programme.
“Seeing a room full of Jesuits dancing and singing along with young people as they rapped about their struggles and aspirations was definitely the highlight of the meeting for me,” said McVeigh.
After the meeting, the next step now is to improve. “For the next few years, we will try to upgrade our skills,” said Fr Nono. “We will try to perhaps get to know how to raise funds and ‘seduce’ Jesuits to join us in this very challenging, but very, very powerful ministry which is communications.” [Province Express, SAV Puskat]