(Photo WYD Pilgrims’ Training)
Hot on the heels of Pope Benedict XVI’s recent Papal Visit to Croatia, two media training days have just taken place in Liverpool and London to prepare young British pilgrims for the Papal Visit to Madrid for World Youth Day this August (16-21).
The World Youth Day Communications Officers training programme is designed to equip young media pilgrims with the tools and the confidence to go out and generate joyful content around the Pope’s Visit to Madrid. World Youth Day is quite simply the biggest mobilisation of young people in the cause of peace across the world and the largest festival that Europe will see this summer – we are talking about 2 million young people descending on Spain’s capital to see the pope and 3,200 of those will be coming from the UK. The idea behind the Communications Officers programme is to let as many people as possible know about the Day using all the creative media tools available.
60 young people from 18 different dioceses, as well as new movements and organisations have been trained for this very important role within the Church, building on the 60 already trained for the Papal Visit and World Youth Day Sydney 08.
Modules included:
• How to interview/be interviewed
• What makes news
• Embracing the digital continent
• Being ambassadors to your contemporaries within the digital world
• Mobile pics – photo sharing
• Building a social media content strategy for World Youth Day
“The training in Liverpool was excellent – it has helped prepare the WYD Communication Officers to have the skills, knowledge and confidence to be able to articulate coherently the ‘thrust’ of WYD with its associated experiences,” said Lorraine from Salford.
“The training day has not only been helpful in practical terms, but really made it clear to all of us that we have a responsibility as young Catholic journalists. After today, I think all of us just can’t wait to get there!” said Chris from London.
Both training days began with Mass, celebrated in Liverpool by the Archbishop of Liverpool, Patrick Kelly and in London by Fr Christopher Jamison, Director of the National Office for Vocation.
The blog, twitter and facebook pages for the UK pilgrimage to WYD Madrid:
WordPress
http://www.ukpilgrims.com
Twitter
http://twitter.com/#!/ukpilgrims
facebook
http://www.facebook.com/ukpilgrims
Images from the training day are on our Flickr stream.
Creative Commons – please attribute to © Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk
