Workshop Managing Social Communications

The workshop Managing Social Communications. How to plan and implement

Church media activities effectively brought together 12 heads of national

and diocesan media and press offices from Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania,

Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and the Ukraine. Hosted by the

Information Office of the Slovakian Catholic Bishops’ Conference the

workshop was organized from 1-6 October, 2007, by CAMECO and sponsored by

the Catholic private charitable Fidel-Götz-Foundation in Liechtenstein.

The main aim of the workshop was to impart practical tools to facilitate the

planning and organization processes of their offices and their future

projects. It was envisaged to learn about different approaches to tailoring

media initiatives for specific target groups.

The workshop was directed by A. Sofie Jannusch from CAMECO and Jim

McDonnell, the former Director of the Catholic Communications Centre (CCC),

the national communications development and training office for the Catholic

Church in England and Wales, who currently runs his own communications

consultancy. Theo Peporté, head of the Service for Communication and Press

of the diocese of Luxembourg gave a short introduction into his activities

to improve the internal communication structures. Stefan Eß, Deputy Managing

Director of the Medien-Dienstleistung GmbH (MDG), a consultancy for Catholic

media in Germany, introduced the participants in the difficulties of

addressing different “milieus” with religious messages.

The workshop was meant as a first pilot event for the personnel, managing

the different activities, linked to the social communication ministry of the

church. Thus, further initiatives for training Church communicators in CEE

are foreseen.