 |
Dennis Smith has lived and worked in Guatemala since 1977. He coordinates the Publications and Communications Training Program for the Central American Evangelical Center for Pastoral Studies (Cedepca), an ecumenical training center for women and men doing pastoral work in Central America. |
| Dennis Smith, new President, WACC (Photo by Erick Coll, Cuba) |
|
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., Smith was an honours graduate in speech communications at Wheaton College in Illinois, and subsequently completed a one-year graduate fellowship at the National College of Education in Evanston, Illinois. The following year, his new home church, First Presbyterian in Evanston, sponsored him on a one-year volunteer assignment as a communication consultant to the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Guatemala.
After two years in the private sector back in the U.S., Smith returned to Guatemala to continue working in communication with the Guatemalan Presbyterian Church, with a five-year fraternal worker assignment with the United Presbyterian Church (USA) beginning in October 1977. In July 1984 Smith received a new appointment at the request of the Latin American Evangelical Center for Pastoral Studies CELEP, based in San José, Costa Rica. He coordinated CELEP's Education for Communication program, conducting conferences and workshops on such themes as theology of communication, the gospel and the electronic media, education and evangelism rooted in local reality, and interpersonal communication.
From 2004 through 2007 Smith served as the president of the Latin America region of the World Association for Christian Communications. At the WACC Congress in Cape Town, Smith was elected the new president of WACC, replacing Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, from Kenya.
Manuel Quintero: What does your election as president of the World Alliance of Christian Communication represent for you?
Dennis Smith: WACC has been very important to my professional development and also to my participation in civil society in Latin America. I have been part of WACC for almost 30 years, so this is an opportunity for me to continue serving and learning. I began in WACC around 1979. I was staff for a religious film distribution service and a communication training office in Casaltenango, Guatemala. At that time my only contact with the world of Christian communication was the WACC Action newsletter.
Then I began to participate in conferences and WACC is the place where I experienced firsthand the powerful world of Latin America communication theory and practice. It is the place where I was able to work together on the full inclusion of women in communication, and participate in the struggle for communications rights. It has been a professional association but it has also been my school. So this is an opportunity for me to build upon those experiences and to work in a larger global setting.
Quintero How has your experience in Guatemala influenced and shaped your vision of communication?
Smith: The Guatemalan experience is unique in several things. First of all, [it means] discovering the world of communication in a culture of impunity, in a culture of violence, and understanding how creating spaces for communication is the only way that we can try to work together to build a future, after so many decades of conflict. Communication presupposes listening to one another and discovering what we have in common, but also not forgetting the past and demanding accountability for the past.
The other great contribution that the Guatemalan experience has for me is the enormous cultural diversity of the country. It is a land where half of the population are Mayan peoples, where 22 languages are spoken in addition to Spanish. Thus it is a place where respect for the other person and understanding of the presence of the Creator in the other person helps us to strengthen our own identity, because of seeing the strength of the culture and identity of the other.
Quintero: Like other ecumenical organizations, WACC faces the challenge of not having enough resources to respond to many valuable projects around the world. Is WACC’s present structure and program emphasis facilitating its work, or is it somewhat too restrictive to respond to new initiatives?
Smith: : What the new program structure allows us to do is to sharpen and focus our efforts, and here I am speaking from the Latin American experience. Because one of the things we began to do more than a decade ago in Latin America was to understand that there is so much out there that, as we say in Spanish, el que mucho abarca, poco aprieta (jack of all trades, master of none). So we felt the need to focus on issues of communication rights, the full inclusion of women, indigenous groups and Afro-Latin American people in communication processes, with the special focus of a conversation on the role of communication in both political and religious fundamentalisms. And so as we focused on these things, we understood that we could have a bigger impact.
At the same time, I think that it has helped us to understand the power of networking, of not feeling the need to do alone what we can do better together with the world of the academy, with the world of Latin America civil society and with other ecumenical agencies and professional communication agencies throughout Latin America. That is another important benefit.
The money is out there. We have to figure out how to find it in such a way that the good stuff that we are doing does not depend on access to major outside sources. Once we demonstrate what we are already doing, then it is easier for us to find a new financial partner that wants to participate in our success. We need to be able to demonstrate our excellence in impacting global society.
Quintero: What is the importance of communication rights in a globalized world?
Smith: Communication rights is one of the key issues of the new time we are entering in the world and WACC will be present in the global struggle for communications rights. In a day where identity is so precarious because of the forces of consumer society and the political and religious and ideological movements, communication and the right to communicate--especially of those who have been silenced, those who have been invisibilized--is going to allow us to strengthen voices of civil society through diversity.
Quintero:>: How do you see WACC in the years to come?
Smith: Part of what we need to do is continue to strengthen WACC internally. The move from London to Toronto has been good, but all change is challenging. So now we need to make sure that the new structure is one that promotes WACC as a movement of Christian communicators around the world. Part of this is going to be program, but we must strengthen the regions, so that they do not feel that WACC is primarily a place for financing projects, but a place where we can capture and share a vision of communication at the service of justice and peace.
-------------
For comments about Congress visit: http://www.waccglobal.info/Blog/
See Congress photos at: www.flickr.com/photos/wacccongress2008
See Congress videos at: www.youtube.com/user/WACCglobal |
