Xaverians in the Philippines inhabiting the digital world

The Delegation of the Philippines began its presence on the web with the website xaveriansphil.org done by Father Alejandro Rodriguez. Then, the international theology community joined by creating the website theologasia.ph in October 2011. This site was managed and grew slowly thanks to the efforts of the students and priests of the community.

The January 2016 Social Media Conference presented itself as our opportunity for renewal, expansion and sharing new strategies in order to work together not only as single communities but as the Philippines Delegation, and as Xaverians and missionaries in the digital world.

The Delegation commissioned this work to Francisco Javier Beltran in June 2016, and together with him, we had a long reflection on the format, objectives, and purposes of the new Delegation website.

Migration and structure of the new site

We started with the entire migration of the site theologasia.ph to the new website of the Delegation philippines.xaverians.org  We did not want to lose anything that had already been done in the past. The former site of the theological community becomes thus the web of the Delegation, where all the communities present in the Philippines meet and express themselves.

The site has been structured in two parts: a static one, and a dynamic part.

The static part contains the presentation of our missionary congregation, our charism, the founder and patron.

The dynamic part contains articles, news, multimedia galleries, and events. Furthermore, there is a page for vocations and another for biblical reflections.

Finally, the bottom of each page contains contacts, links, and access to administrators.

Meetings of Information, Training, and Workshops

From January 5th to February 10th, 2019 Fr. Gabriel visited the communities. He had the opportunity to personally introduce the website, its potentialities, and together we learned to use it and recreate it. Each confrere has an individual user-name to access it so that we can all cooperate in the growth and development of this new platform.

We have organized workshops to better align ourselves with the use of the site, social media, and the production of multimedia material. Unfortunately, the shortness of time and at times the lack of internet signal prevented us from working and going even further.

During these workshops with the communities, we published about 10 videos on the Youtube channel www.youtube.com/missionarisaveriani, and on our site. But there are still 10 more to be published very soon.

Strategy

Each member of the Delegation will work for his own community page, sharing his activities and reflections. To everyone the task of discerning well the contents, taking care to use photos without copyright.

Everyone ought to use their own social media presence (both personal pages, and community pages we manage) in order to spread the contents of the site.

Fr. Javier Beltran, who is in charge of the website of the Delegation, will monitor the good use of the site. Together with those who work in missionary animation and vocation promotion, he will take care of the vocational page, and the page with biblical reflections.

For the production of multimedia, all confreres are invited to be creative in order to communicate our mission message in a youthful and modern way. Fr. Javier will also coordinate this production.

Conclusion

The challenge is great, maybe too great; but our missionary consecration, our commitment, and witness of “real” life stories will certainly bring passion and enthusiasm for our charism to the “virtual” world: “that our Lord Jesus Christ may be known and loved.”

We are only at the beginning of this mission project. The “Saveriani in rete” project not only makes us work together as a single missionary family in the world, but might leads us also to find and discover new journeys, new paths that have not yet been traveled, where our charism has yet reached.