Following a successful Caribbean School for Catholic Communication (CSCC), a group of Caribbean communicators met at Living Water Community on August 15-16 with the intention of clarifying the vision of Catholic communicators in the Caribbean.

Group of Caribbean communicators pose with Marc Aellen (right) after their two-day meeting.

Present at the meeting were representatives from Dominica , Barbados , Belize , Grenada and Trinidad . Marc Aellen (future General Secretary of SIGNIS – World Catholic Association for Communication) from Brussels also attended as an observer.

The focus of the meeting was:

• to create an association of media practitioners/professionals (in radio, television and press) in the region

• to create a network that would support and facilitate better communication between Caribbean Catholic communicators

• to formulate an organisational structure

• to finalise a constitution that reflects the vision and model of the organisation

The meeting was extremely successful and those present agreed to create a forum for the exchange/sharing of ideas, resources, expertise and Audio/Visual programmes.

They recognised the need to provide on-going formation and training for Catholic media practitioners. They also planned to take steps towards becoming recognised and respected as a “ Caribbean entity” with networking linkages to SIGNIS/OCLACC, UCIP and other regional and international media organisations.

The first planned project would be an inter-Caribbean magazine programme for radio.

All member countries of the AEC would be invited to participate and hopefully this would become a quarterly production starting in December 2005.

The formal launch of this association will take place early in 2006.