Global Communicators Network Study Reconciliation

Charles Villa-Vicencio director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation

The originating bodies, and the core constituency of the network are the development and international aid agencies related to those churches associated with the World Council of Churches. Participants are people who work with mass media in their national context, who are conveying messages of social change, and who wish to share these interests and concerns with a wider forum.

The network brings communications people together to discuss development and everyday issues linked to development issues from the differing perspectives of the global North and South.  There is a GCN meeting every two years. The next meeting will be held in Latin America.

Charles Villa-Vicencio, director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, which hosted the meeting in South Africa this November, opened the meeting saying “talking to one another, listening to one another, understanding one another. That is what reconciliation is about…ten years previous everyone had predicted a bloodbath and in that context Bishop Tutu calls it a miracle that people have been able to talk to each other.” Welcoming participants Villa-Vicencio added that though there are lot of outstanding issues: poverty and HIV/AIDS for example “we are no longer killing each other, we’ve got a platform from which to address our other problems”.

The meeting was hosted by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation whose work WACC supports.

More information:
GCN website: www.globalcommunicators.net
IJR website: www.ijr.org.za