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Social Communication Department
Social Communication DepartmentBackground The Social communications department (SCD) is among the first departments to be created in ECS. It was opened more than 20 years ago out of the need to foster the circulation of information among the lay faithful, congregations and the Church people. During that time, Ethiopia was going through a big crisis of famine, which brought a challenge to our capacity in communicating. However, famine was not the only motivation behind the establishment of the SCD. The Church, being a very tiny minority, wanted that her members and institutions knew more about each other's activities to participate in a common vision and mission. In this context, communications was seen as one possible response to collaboration and mutual support. To foster communications an ECS newsletter was created and a documentation service was organized. After more than 20 years, while the initial vision for the establishment of the department continues to be present, the SCD has built up through the years a broader and better understanding of its mission that helped to gather more interest in the people. The activities became better organized in the last five years and the personnel better qualified as a result of the re-structuring process of ECS. Today the Social communications department shares basically the vision and the mission of the Church and the plan of activities reflects the nature of its service in the support of the spreading of "Gospel Values". It works with the "vision to offer Christian men and women to come together to a great table to participate in a countrywide and world-wide exchange of brotherhood, for a mutual and sympathetic understanding, dialogue and co-operation" (annual plan year 2002). The SCD sees itself in the mission of helping the Church in Ethiopia grasp the meaning, and appreciate the importance and validity of the media and the urgency of using them to speak on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged; and to proclaim the divine message without fear or compromise. Objectives and Strategies Social Communications is not an activity along with the others. We understand communications as a service given to the Church. As such, we have the objective of mainstreaming the activities appealing to the value of integrating the component of communications in all programs working in both development and pastoral dimensions. Mandates Provide expertise and guidance to diocesan secretariats, religious congregations and people in the institutions of the Church for an effective and wider use of the modern means of communications and the Evangelization and development work; · Enable the catholic community to develop a communications strategy capable of stimulating a wave of fresh Christian thinking that can reach out to the grass roots countrywide; · Help to define and develop the concept of Church communications in the context of the specific reality and situation of the country; · Animate the dioceses and support their growth through capacity building; · Represent the communications activities of the Church in Ethiopia within the international media institutions of the universal Church. Core Services The services that SCD is ready to offer are closely related with the mandates presented above. The first priority is to give any expert supporting the dioceses when they feel ready to open an office for diocesan communications and request the technical help of SCD. It is part of the program of the department to research on the concept of Church communications and to propose accordingly the reflection on a common vision. The most recent effort to pull dioceses together is the program of the field trips that focused on some specific topics presented below: (1) Seminar with an input "Mission of Diocesan Communications; Concept drawn from the documents of the Church; (2) Guidelines on how to prepare a Plan of Action for Diocesan Communications; (3) Identifying Partners and fund raising activity; (4) Concept and mechanisms aimed at self-sustainability.
Complementary activities 1. Publication of the Church newspaper called Fikirna Selam/LINK. It is bilingual in Amharic and English and is issued on monthly basis. 2. The publication of ECS Newsletter, on quarterly basis; 3. The production of the Catholic Directory, up-dated every two years. 4. The running of a video-lending library, that lends movies to the people of the Church on the main areas of education, entertainment and Bible; 5. The department offers Audio Studio and video facilities to document the various projects and programs in ECS and in the dioceses; 6. The department facilitates and organizes press conferences on request for the projects of ECS departments and Church organizations; 7. The department collects data regarding the Church, makes analyses of that data and enters the information in a data base system. 8. The department provides a GIS service to ECS and DCSs Establishment of ECC Data BaseECS, Social Communications department is now giving special attention to the establishment of Database activity, which was understood as one of the areas that needs to be strengthened. To this end a questionnaire was developed to collect information from the dioceses in 15 different fields. The data is being processed. Statistics will be prepared based on the data collected. A good step forward is the creation of the current Web site for the Ethiopian Catholic Church. The web-site address is http://www.ecs.org.et”. Some of the activities are registered using the geographical mapping of the dioceses and the location of the sites of the activities of the Church at wereda level. Part of the same material has been published in the Ethiopian Catholic Directory 2004 and is posted in the web site in a broader way. In the near future there is the plan to develop a meaningful video documentary for the Catholic Church in Ethiopia. The way forward It is being understood that the Social Communications is communications as a service given to the Church. Thus, mainstreaming the activities of the component of communications is important in all programs working both in development and in pastoral. Address:
Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat
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©2005 Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat |