austraLasia 1081
TV, communications and EAO
HUA HIN: 14th March 2005 -- 'TV' here means
Team Visit, but it might just as well mean what everybody else means by TV,
since the writer has in hand a series of DVDs and other items of the kind
emanating from the now concluded East Asia-Oceania Team Visit. It's time
to give the broader picture of a communication event that leaves the mind
staggering, just a little!
By general consent, the majority of nations
within the Salesian region designated EAO, from Mongolia 'up North' to the
islands of the Pacific 'down South', are not as advanced technologically as
other parts of the world. Exceptions there are, of course. It appears that
the more low-tech East has stolen a march on the more hi-tech West in a number
of ways. The men and women of the EAO region have done themselves proud
during the Team Visit. It is worth giving the reader an overview of what
actually happened.
'Communications', for THA, during the Team
Visit, meant far more than equipment, bandwidth and an efficient Technology
Centre (S.I.T). It meant a particular and indeed outstanding degree of
hospitality that made even non English speakers feel very much at home.
One group, the Koreans, who are less accustomed to regular exchange in English,
felt very much at home and able to communicate. One Councillor, Fr
Domenech, (who just moments ago accepted a CD especially put together to
help people like him learn English), gave/read, but the effort was
admirable, his talk in English, perhaps for the first time, because he felt
encouraged to do so.
That's the background to real
communications. To that we add: the GIA website - being managed, oddly
enough from Dublin, during this week - linked in with austraLasia to give
almost real time coverage of events for Japan's web-viewers (check www.salesio.jp ). The Team Visit dossier, a
hefty tome, was available for participants in Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese as
well as English. All events during the meetings, group work, assemblies,
were available in minuted and visually projected form almost immediately
afterwards and certainly for the next step each time. Provinces were able
(and some did so) to use the same materials for in-province animation
concurrently. The THA confreres' retreat, preached by Fr Cef Ledesma, missionary
in Cambodia, began in Hua Hin two days after the Team Visit with a summary,
in Thai, of the Visit, drawn from austraLasia and www.sdb.org materials.
EAO is 'thinking' in
communication terms for starters. And while one also has to consider
a number of ethical questions, the fact remains that a number of materials,
including the recent film of a prominent Religious Founder (!) are already
in Tetum and an abbreviated version in English; that the Mongolia DVD
and CD are already in Vietnamese...
If you want all the documents from EAOTV
they are now available on www.bosconet.aust.com with a single
click (a zip file). There are even ppt files zipped for your access
(hefty!).
__________________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian
Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based
in Rome. Try also www.bosconet.aust.com and Lexisdb
