Dominican Communicators Strategize On Justice Agenda
Members of the Dominican Communicators' Network: Seated: Dusty Farnan, OP (Adrian) Peggy Ryan, OP (Caldwell) Dana Lear (Kentucky) Donna Brunell, OP (Hope) Mary Karen McClellan (Adrian) Elaine Osborne, OP (Great Bend) Standing: Tricia Buxton (Sinsinawa) Kathy Nolan, OP (Adrian) Anne Lythgoe, OP (DLC) Shirley Bodisch, OP (St. Mary) Dolores Mitch, MM (Maryknoll) JoAnn Niehaus, OP (Houston) Eileen Gannon, OP DLC/NGO (Sparkill) Jeanne Muloolly (Racine) Barbara Larner, OP (Mission San Jose) Alice Black (Columbus) Tony Butler, (DVUSA) Rebecca Ford, (Great Bend) Chuck Dahm, OP (St. Albert)
Dominican communications coordinators and directors from across the US met at Weber Center, in Adrian. MI to sharpen their skills and engage in conversation with Dominican Sisters from Iraq and the North American Co-Promoters of Justice, Dusty Farnan, OP and Chuck Dahm, OP. Dusty has recently returned from a Catholic Relief Services delegation trip to Syria and Lebanon.
Iraqi Dominican Sisters (l to r) Aman Mansoor, OP and Luma Kudher, OP
The meeting's theme Reaching beyond our
Own Borders was carried out in conversation with
Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, Mosul, Iraq and with Galia Thomas, of the Chaldean Community in Detroit.
The communicators explored ways to get
the message out from the Iraqi sisters
both to congregations and provinces
as well as the public media.
The communicators also heard a preliminary report from Dusty Farnan, OP (Adrian) North American Co-Promoter of Justice on her recent Catholic Relief Services sponsored visit to Syria and Lebanon. The goal of that trip was to gather information about the health and educational needs of Iraqi refugees who are pouring out of Iraq.
Anne Lythgoe, OP DLC Communications Coordinator, gave an update on the work of the office over the last year, including statistics on www.domlife.org and showed a powerful PowerPoint presentation that was first aired at the DLC Annual Meeting in October.
Scott Steinkerchner, Promoter of the Internet for the Dominican Order, engaged the group in a demonstration of newer open source technologies that allow greater collaboration and content management and offered a sneak preview of the renovations to the Order's main website www.op.org
Stay tuned to see more of this exciting happening!
Best Practices is a session that communicators appreciate because it offers real life examples of projects and events that require sound communications planning and expertise.
This year, JoAnn Niehaus, OP (Houston) described a collaborative website for four Houston area religious communities designed to both tell the stories of 21st century women religious and to invite women to consider joining us Log on to www.catholicnunstoday.org.
Tricia Buxton, Communications Director for Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, showed a flash video virtual tour of the chapel windows at Sinsinawa Mound.
At the end of the very full agenda, the communicators worked on next steps in creating opportunities to share the message of the Iraqi sisters and the findings of the delegation to Syria and Lebanon. The hope is to create stories that can be shared locally and nationally.
Look on our Caldwell homepage for soon-to-be-published stories that tell the struggle of everyday life for Iraqi people who live now in a devastated Iraq, and the Iraqi refugees in Syria and Lebanon.
