WACC Strategic Plan

Preamble

Since its founding in 1968, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) has sought to bring about societies in which all people everywhere are able to engage in transparent, informed, and democratic debate. WACC’s Theory of Change articulates how a focus on communication – as a right, as a practice, as a skill, and as a profession – is fundamental to achieving dignity, inclusion, and informed and active participation, essential to sustainable development and to just and peaceful communities.

This vision of communication for all is underpinned by Principles of Communication, which WACC seeks to express among its members and network and through its programme and action:

Communication is a spiritual exercise
Communication builds and shapes community
Communication enhances participation
Communication promotes freedom and demands accountability
Communication celebrates cultural diversity
Communication builds connectedness
Communication affirms justice and challenges injustice

Vision and Mission

Vision

Communication for All

Mission

The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) is an international organization that promotes communication as a basic human right, essential to people’s dignity and community.

Rooted in Christian faith, WACC works with all those denied the right to communicate because of status, identity, or gender. It advocates full access to information and communication and promotes open and diverse media.

WACC strengthens networks of communicators to advance peace, understanding and justice.

The Communication Rights Mandate

Vision and Mission

The Communication Rights Mandate

“Believing that communication embodies respect for the dignity, integrity, equality and freedom of all human beings and their communities, WACC recognizes communication rights as inherent in all other human rights.

Communication rights claim spaces and resources in the public sphere for everyone to be able to engage in transparent, informed and democratic debate.

They claim political, social and cultural environments that encourage the free exchange of a diversity of creative ideas, knowledge and cultural products.

WACC aims to strengthen a movement for communication rights, which includes advocacy among our networks to expand public communication spaces, to support public interest media, and to promote media freedom, digital rights, linguistic diversity, and local sustainability.
From: Communication for All: Sharing WACC’s Principles

Vision and Mission

The Global Environment

The Global Environment

Overcoming inequality and poverty is fundamental to the UN’s 2030 Agenda, which embraced “leaving no one behind” as the cardinal principle to guide all sustainable development efforts at local, national, regional and global levels. The diverse manifestations of inequality are expressed in all spheres – gender, geography, access to education, social protection, clean water and sanitation, technologies, land and natural resources – and need to be addressed in concert and through complementary measures.

Steps to enable universal digital access must include special measures to remove barriers for those who are already marginalised – women, indigenous people, rural populations and others. There is continuing disparity in women’s internet access in rich and poor countries alike. There is a lack of gender-oriented design, education, and resourcing of digital communications. These represent new kinds of injustice and exclusion that manifest themselves as misogyny and oppressive gender relations online. In our online and offline communication, we must be vigilant to include voices from developing countries and traditionally marginalised people and groups, women, youth, indigenous people, religious and ethnic minorities, rural populations and older people.

Media and information literacy are also vital prerequisites for effective access. Adequate levels of media use require training and education, democratic participation, accessibility of formats and technology for people with disabilities and other distinctive needs, diverse content in appropriate languages, freedom of expression, and opportunities for community and citizen-produced media. There is also the matter of technical competencies, linguistic diversity and capacity building as fundamentals of genuine access.

The major platforms’ hold over this infrastructure, as well as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and the “Internet of things” create growing challenges to citizens’ autonomy and global communications governance. In addition, control and censorship of the internet by authoritarian states seeking to restrict access to information and suppress views that differ from official ones is a growing phenomenon. Instead, the design of media infrastructures and digital platforms must respond to the needs of diverse language communities, individuals with different ability levels, learning styles, and financial resources.

The global communications environment has been profoundly changed by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is important to learn lessons from increased reliance on digital platforms and to study its implications for society at all levels.

Strategic Programme Priorities
2022–2026

The overall goal of WACC’s programmes is to ensure that all its activities, projects and advocacy are focused on promoting, implementing and supporting the communication rights of all, especially the poorest, most excluded and most vulnerable people and communities.

WACC realizes its goal through a range of actions: community capacity building, media monitoring for education and advocacy, comprehensive analysis of media trends from local to international perspectives, and advocacy through a diverse network of activists, educators, media professionals and policy makers. These strategies are applied in five focus areas: digital communication rights; migrants, refugees and communication rights; communication rights and indigenous rights; communication rights and climate change; gender and communication rights.

Vision and Mission