How one congregation harnessed the power of technology to combat pandemic challenges
By Sr Maureen Tinkler DC
“ZOOM and our meeting went boom! High as a rainbow we went flying by! “
(….to paraphrase the famous song by Fat Larry’s Band )
Plan A: Originally our Provincial Assembly (to bring Sisters in Great Britain and Australia together) was to have taken place in a hotel in Bradford last July, but we had to cancel because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Plan B: The British side then arranged to meet in two different venues in the north and south of England and connect via technology with each other and with Australia – but both venues then also cancelled!
Plan C: We had to go back to the drawing board and think of another way around the huge logistical difficulties. The result was a technological experiment from our Provincial House in North London. We decided to run the Assembly by Zoom with Screen Share Presentations and Break Out Groups for small group work - using the White Board feature in our meeting room for group feedback purposes. The financial outlay for the technology was appreciable but when balanced against the costs that we would have incurred for hiring venues and technicians, we easily broke even and had the added investment value of having this equipment available for the future. It was a good strategic decision, with future planning in mind.
This required a lot of preparation and training. At our Provincial House in Mill Hill we created a HUB - a Social Comms Room. Here we installed a PTZ (PAN, Tilt, Zoom) video camera which filmed proceedings via Zoom using a 98” LCD Screen which we installed on the wall.
We had 66 delegates attending the Assembly - from both Great Britain and Australia (For the DCs - these Geographic areas now form the Province of ‘Rosalie Rendu’). The average age of our Sisters is 72, and very few of them had used Zoom before, so we had to put on a focussed Zoom Training Programme.
Sr Ellen Flynn DC
Before the training began, we had to make sure that every house had superfast broadband installed and that each delegate had access to an up-to-date laptop or PC. Also, when using Zoom, each delegate had to be in her own room on her own machine otherwise there would be terrible feedback problems!!
Zoom Training took place on 5 working days before the Assembly began. A Zoom link was sent to each delegate and the training session lasted for one hour. Sisters who felt confident just came to a single session. Other, less-confident delegates attended all the training sessions. We also conducted about 30 individual sessions for the very diffident Sisters.
During the Assembly we voted on various proposals and propositions. For voting purposes each delegate had been sent 3 large squares - RED (no), GREEN (yes) and YELLOW (abstain). Our delegates filled 3 Zoom screens (25+ per page) When each delegate voted by holding up her card screen shots were taken of the three Participants’ Gallery pages, so it was easy to count and get accurate results.
Sisters in Australia
We also elected two delegates to attend the General Assembly next year with our Provincial, Sr Ellen Flynn. For this voting, (which needed to be private), we used survey monkey.
In conclusion, nothing can ever replace being together for a Provincial Meeting, but we asked our Sisters to evaluate their experience afterwards and they overwhelmingly fed back that they had really enjoyed it. The Assembly on Zoom had achieved its purpose and the Sisters were pleased with their newly acquired IT skills; in fact the Zooming still continues on a regular basis across the Province : we link up to “Meet and Greet”, share prayer & participate in webinars…….
To misquote Vera Lynn, the following refrain has become our very own:
“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again - using Zoom-ing skills!”