The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and SIGNIS (the World Catholic Association for Communication), which together currently sponsor a human-rights film award, said they are exploring ways of working more closely.
Inspired by WACC’s Gender Media Monitoring Program, which analyzes the representation of women and men in the media, SIGNIS plans to start a media monitoring program on children, said SIGNIS General Secretary Alvito de Souza after meeting with WACC General Secretary the Rev. Karin Achtelstetter in Aachen, Germany, on Aug. 19.
The meeting was facilitated by Daniela Frank, executive director of the Catholic Media Council.
Achtelstetter and De Souza underlined the two organizations’ cooperation with regard to the annual WACC-SIGNIS Human Rights film award. (Last year, it was awarded to “The Garden at the End of the World,” a documentary on the impact of the war in Afghanistan on widows and orphans.)
“This positive experience of cooperation is a basis on which we could build further collaboration,” said Achtelstetter. De Souza expressed his hope that officers of both global organizations could meet in the future.
Based in Brussels, SIGNIS is an international association that brings together communications and media professionals from more than 100 countries around the theme “Media for a Culture of Peace.” WACC, based in Toronto, has members and partners in 120 countries and promotes communication for social change.