News

The Association of Franciscan Families of India (AFFI) organized a national training for provincials and the secretaries of Franciscan family for effective communication and professionalism in the office management at St. Fidelis Ashram, Lucknow. There were 72 members of AFFI, provincials and their secretaries attended the December 1-4 intensive hands-on training on “Social Media and Communications”

The seminar was aimed at making the secretaries to be professional in communicating the message to the other province members. Today the world is ruled by digital media. So, we need to update ourselves to catch up the world in the field of digital technology. Thus, this seminar was an opportunity to update oneself in the field of digital technology. All the participants were well equipped digitally that is all were present with laptops, smartphones and internet connection.

Fr. Suresh OFM. Cap., Chief Editor, Indian Currents, Fr. Nitya Sagayam OFM. Cap, the Program Coordinator, AFFI, and Fr. Anthony Swamy SVD, Program Coordinator, RVA Hindi Service were the main resource persons of the seminar. This seminar had intellectual inputs as well as practical learning skills regarding Digital Technology.
Fr. Suresh began his input sessions highlighting the importance to know about the present political and religious situations in India. His sessions focused clearly on the job of the secretaries, time management, event (Assemblies and Chapters) management, preparing for the meetings, professionalism in communicating the decisions, maintaining the secrecy of the administration, report writing and presenting, Public relationship, managing the conflict situations and knowing the laws of the land.

Fr. Nitya Sagayam OFM. Cap., took session on how to conduct ourselves when other province members come to the provincials. As a secretary we need to make everyone feel at home. It needs a lot of effort to be cheerful and accommodative. He advised all the secretaries to accept everyone in the province equally without any discrimination and maintain the secrecy of the administration.

Fr. Anthony Swamy SVD took the sessions on practical skills such as Mobile Photography, Pocketing filming, Colour theory, editing, (Videos and well as images) creating greetings cards, invitation cards, book mark, news letter etc. This session enabled all the participants to create content for the social media.

On the last day, each participant presented one’s audio-visual productions. The participants have formed a strong network with each other to communicate effectively for their provinces and their apostolate. Most of them have requested the AFFI to have such training annually in view of effective output.