WUJA’s communication: a challenging new orientation

Communication nowadays is mostly digital, multidirectional, network oriented and structured as a spider web. It leans on a bouquet of interacting communication tools and channels. (1)

As the Executive Committee of the World Union of Jesuit Alumni(ae) (WUJA) wished to enhance its overall communication and interaction with its base (2), it had to revisit both the content of its communication and the channels to convey it to the desired targeted audiences. New tools that meet the needs of WUJA are gradually to be developed, aiming at increasing the penetration of the messages and the impact of the communication, hence the overall efficacy of WUJA’s action.

Electronic publishing and distribution will therefore become the primary means for reaching WUJA’s audience. This means that, beginning with this issue, this publication will be distributed electronically. This will enable us to broaden the distribution, significantly cut production costs and cut the volunteer time necessary to produce the publication.

WUJA’s magazine that you are reading presently is posted on a specific website and an email containing the link to this website was and will be sent out to thousands of recipients each time a new issue comes out. This will allow WUJA to expand its distribution and its audience. Electronic publishing however implied revamping ETC, the magazine of the World Union, changing its name, renewing the web site and connecting it to social networks. This will take some time. The issue nb. 1 is the first step of the process.

The Executive Committee asked Michel Jadot to take over the chief editorship of the new version of ETC, renamed The Jesuit Alumnus, to make proposals as to how to deploy these means and to maximise their impact, so that THE JESUIT ALUMNUS becomes one of WUJA’s critical communication tools.

Michel is an alumnus of Collège Saint-Michel in Brussels / Belgium. He will be reporting to the Executive Committee. He will have gradually to set up his team in order to build up a broad panel of responsive sources of articles and information from all over the globe in order to guaran-tee a comprehensive representation of our “population”. The World Union is indeed fortunate to have Michel Jadot as our chief editor. He has both the educational and professional background combined with a commitment to WUJA that will ensure a first-class and exciting publication.

The JESUIT ALUMNUS will be published in three languages (3), twice a year. Three issues per annum might be considered when adequate resources are available and the process has reached cruise speed. This is the challenge ahead.

The JESUIT ALUMNUS must certainly be much more than a newsletter: it must, among other characteristics, excite people about what our fellow alumni from around the world are doing and foster interaction between various alumni groups. In other words, it must help the alumni discover one another in their immense diversity. These are some basic features of the editorial policy as communicated by the Executive Committee to the chief editor. This policy will have to be further developed to bring the Jesuit Alumnus to the level of a true tool to mobilise our members.

THE JESUIT ALUMNUS and the web site must be a bridge to enable the sj alumni around the world to become a true social network that is held together in its great diversity by a strong common denominator (their sj education). If this network is real and if communication flows efficiently amongst them through THE JESUIT ALUMNUS and the website, then we shall be able to mobilise them and have them contributing their talents, time and treasure to causes that we would like to invite them to support.

Tribute to R. Treseder by T Bausch, president

As we are about to make an important step, I would like to pay tribute to Robyn Treseder who for many years was the editor of ETC. Her professional competence and dedication to WUJA and ETC moved it forward to a new level of excellence so that we can now take the steps necessary to move into the electronic age. Thank you Robyn!

¹ ID box: for each author, a number of information will be systematically mentioned as follows: Christian name, Family name, Title Jesuit institution where the author studied, Year of graduation, Country of graduation Email address, Profession, Country of residence
² The latter includes the continental confederations, the national federations, the local associations, the alumni(ae) themselves, the Jesuits and the friends of the Society of Jesus.
³ Spanish, French and English.