The members of the plenary council are in good spirits and they are keeping the momentum going on this fifth day of the plenary council which started with work in groups during the morning session. The afternoon plenary session began with the debate on the protocol for the GA 2025, which was a continuation of the work that was already done. Before putting the document to vote, members agreed to change the dates of the completion of the election of delegates from 28th of October to 31st July 2024.

All the 21 members voted unanimously for the approval AG 2025 protocol Document.

Fr. Rozario made a presentation about secrétariat in general and data management. During the ongoing Formation Programme for Secretaries that took place in January and March this year, there was a closer look at the crucial role of secretariats in administration and how they work in the SMA.

Fr. Rozario said secretaries are data managers in every organisation. They manage personal data of members, organisational data like directories, protocols…etc, and administrative data like minutes of meetings and records of correspondence. He likened a good secretariat to an up-to-date encyclopaedia of the organisation.

Data management involves collection, organisation, and preservation of data. There are growing concerns over compliance to data protection policies.

Good archives follow naturally from good secretariats. Current archives are managed by the Secretaries and historical archives are managed by archivists.

He observed that some entities do not have secretaries, and the superior doubles in as the secretary as well. Certain entities have newly ordained priests as secretaries for a few years and then replace them with other newly ordained priests after a few years. Some Entities secretaries are overwhelmed with many other responsibilities that they do not have enough time for the secretariat.

He lamented that with a loose secretarial arrangement, it is hard to establish a tradition and a knowledge base and it is hard also to build archives. New secretaries taking office often do not know the procedures. Most of them do not have checklists, templates, and other fundamental tools for an efficient administration.

It is upon each superior to look for the profile that is required for the appointment of a secretary.

Members of new entities expressed the need to form the entity bursars in order to keep them up to speed with the various challenges of dealing with finances at different levels of the SMA structures. A team composed of Fr. Fabien Sognon, Emmanuel Zinsou, and Francis Rozario, has been set to come up with a formula that will be developed into an application that will be made available to all the entities in need.

                                                                 By Dominic Wabwireh, SMA