(ANS – Quito) – Strengthening teamwork, tackling the Pope's World Communication Day Message and evaluating communications in the Province: these were the aims of a meeting and retreat for members of the social communication commission in Ecuador and others working in Quito and Cuenca in this field. The event took place on 25 March at the Salesian Regional Ongoing Formation Centre.

Fr Marcelo Farfán, Provincial, Marcelo Mejía, Social Communication Delegate, and Mr Gabriel Terán, director of the Province planning office, ran the day.
 
Fr Farfán took the morning sessions, focusing on three key aspects from the Rector Major's Strenna 2013 on rediscovering the Preventive System: relaunching the “upright citizen” and “good Christian”; returning to the young with greater qualification; education from the heart.

Each of these topics was taken up in group work, setting certain parameters for carrying these things out more effectively at local level. The groups proposed a number of strategies as follows: the educational response must not just follow the labour market trends, but also lead to new ways of being; the importance of a communications strategy that fulfils two things: contact with the places/spaces where young people are, and networking. It was emphasised how all Salesians need to be consistent and authentic in the messages they transmit, the Salesian style of working always being the point of reference.

The morning concluded with a reading of a message sent by Fr Filiberto González, Social Communications Councillor, who invited everyone to reflect on four things that Pope Francis has offered in order to communicate authentically:

1. return to the Lord;
2. look after people, meaning an attitude of care for everyone;
3. look after creation, environment...;
4. believe in the power of service, a service that finds its culmination in the Cross.

In the afternoon they evaluated the Province Social Communication Plan for the 2008-2014 period. Mr Terán helped direct this session, proposing a method to identify what has been discovered, what has succeeded, what have been the weaknesses and suggestions that have emerged. Each group took an aspect of the plan and looked at it from this perspective. The day and the retreat finished with the whole team looking at what the groups had analysed.

Published 08/04/2013