Eighteen Sisters of Mercy from all around the Congregation arrived in Castleblayney on Sunday August 15th and relaxed for the evening before the Workshop began on Monday morning.
The Iontas Centre, Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan
The venue for the Workshop is the Iontas Centre – a dynamic multi-disciplined resource centre with a strong connection to the Sisters of Mercy.
Susan DeGuide rsm, Congregational Leadership Team, gave the opening address on Monday morning and set the context for the entire Workshop. She situated the place of communications within the mission of Mercy – which is to be the compassionate face of God. Susan also reminded the assembled Sisters of the 2006 Chapter Statement and explored how this would come to life during the Workshop.
The participants then spent time becoming more familiar with the congregational website and Members Area and asked themselves, how they could use these sites in their ministries. Great excitement built up as the Sisters explored what’s new in the world of communications technology and examined and discussed social networking and video sharing sites.
The new mercyworld.org web platform was the focus of the afternoon session and everyone was amazed and filled with awe as they visited and navigated through www.mercyworld.org. The new web platform of Mercy International Association is a wonderful resource and all present look forward to delving into it further and to using it to its best advantage.
On Tuesday and Wednesday August 17th and 18th, one group of Sisters began to learn the art of photography from Elizabeth McNamee rsm and Attracta Tighe rsm lead the second group through the essentials of feature writing and the composition of press releases. Great energy was generated in both groups and everyone was delighted with their new skills.
The group spent all day on Thursday working with Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and were amazed at how images could be improved and manipulated using this software. Friday was spent discussing the techniques of interviewing and also learning new skills in using PowerPoint and Publisher.
It was a fantastic week of learning and sharing new skills and we look forward to renewal in our congregational communications as a result.
Ailish O’Brien rsm
Congregation
