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The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) was featured in the DW Global Media Forum held 27-28 May in Bonn, Germany. More than 2,000 media professionals, policymakers, and movers from politics and civil society, culture and education, business and science – representing 140 countries – attended the conference.

Nowadays, any cause can be effectively promoted in a blink of an eye, with a click on a button. At virtually no cost, messages travel fast around the globe through social media and other digital platforms. For good and bad, but mostly for good. Because without it, grassroots movements, such as the Arab Spring, which started in Tunisia in 2010 and ended up toppling several governments, would have had a much harder time rallying support and getting their message across to key audiences.

A new campaign page has been launched for individuals and organizations to support the 2020 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), the largest and longest-running research and advocacy initiative on gender equality in the world’s news media.

On Monday 3 June the WCC hosts a half-day seminar on the legacy of one of ecumenism’s leading figures, archishop Nathan Söderblom, followed by a discussion on today’s ecumenical challenges.

On 5 April, the South Sudan Council of Churches officially presented its new website through a slideshow featuring photos from the site reflecting the idea of embracing peace. Several heads of churches attended to express their support for the council and its latest mode of strengthening communication with its members and with peace supporters across the globe.

More than 220 church leaders representing over 20 churches from Belgium, France, Luxemburg and Switzerland are meeting from 27-31 October in the French city of Lyon for the first Francophone Christian Forum.

World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit will visit Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Antigua from 29 September-9 October. Tveit will be preaching, meeting with religious leaders and visiting communities.

Each year students from all over the world arrive at Bossey near Geneva for a three-month language training course to pave their way for ecumenical studies that follow on straight after. “The title captures the goal of the course,” says Father Lawrence Iwuamadi, the Nigerian priest who studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and is academic dean of the Ecumenical Institute.

At the 75th International Film Festival in Venice, Italy, the film “Tel Aviv on Fire” won an Interfilm award for promoting interreligious dialogue. The film, directed by Sameh Zoabi, is a comedy in which a Palestinian writer draws upon the skills and experiences of an Israeli checkpoint commander to enhance a TV series, “Tel Aviv on Fire.”

“We have sought to support dialogue as a means to resolve differences, and to reaffirm and strengthen calls for justice, peace and respect for diverse ways of thinking in contemporary societies”, reads a message issued by the members of an ecumenical delegation organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) that visited Nicaragua on 28-29 August.

The archbishop Dr Nathan Söderblom, an ecumenical forerunner and messenger of peace in war-torn Europe, challenged a deeply divided Christianity 100 years ago. Against all odds, the Stockholm Conference on Life and Work in 1925 gathered church leaders at a scale the world had not seen since Nicaea 1600 years earlier. And it did not end there.

A World Council of Churches (WCC) “Pilgrim Team” will visit Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, from 18-23 August. Under the theme “African Women of Faith and Gender Justice,” the group aims to acknowledge and build women’s roles in church and society. By focusing on gender justice, and on peace with no violence against women, the Pilgrim Team will raise awareness, and call churches and ecumenical partners to action together for justice and peace.

Originally, they were made of pieces of broken glass from the rubble an Israeli tank left behind it when it slammed into the giftshop at the International Centre of Bethlehem (ICB) in 2002. Today the glass angels of peace are made of used bottles and have emerged into a small business enterprise employing around 50 people in the Bethlehem area. Since the tank-incident, thousands of angels have been produced and sold worldwide.

When Zimbabwe holds general elections on 30 July, the turnout at the polls will most likely be – at least somewhat – affected by the IprayIvote-web and social media campaign, which was launched by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches on 30 January this year, exactly six months prior to the election.

In a powerful symbol of unity, Christians from North and South Korea sang together yesterday during celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The Koreans linked arms to sing the 600-year-old folk song Arirang that is the unofficial anthem of Korea – the united Korea that existed until civil war divided the country in the 1950s.

As people in Seoul held a candlelight vigil on 7 June to pray for peace on the Korean Peninsula, they were joined by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC), and hundreds of others across the world.

The first World Conference on “Religions, Creeds and Value Systems: Joining Forces to Enhance Equal Citizenship Rights” will be held on 25 June 2018 under the Patronage of His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan. It will mark a new conceptual departure towards expanding the boundaries of the convergence of values, which bring the world of religions and faiths together.

As the World Association for Christian Communication celebrates its 50th anniversary, the organization continues to explore how communication can help advance justice and build peace.

The feature-length documentary “Maman Colonelle,” directed by Dieudo Hamadi, has received the Human Rights Award 2017 from the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), and SIGNIS, a worldwide association of Catholic communicators.

Rev. Prof. Dr Rudolf von Sinner, professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue as well as moderator of World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical Education and Formation Commission, offered a public lecture on 13 April at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva as part of the WCC’s ongoing observance of its 70th anniversary this year.