UM News | Monrovia
The Department of Communications of the Liberia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) organized a planning retreat on January 6, 2024, to delineate its goals and strategies for the year. The retreat, lasting three hours, gathered heads of various components within the department, including the Director of Communications, Father Lewis Teah Togba, Sr.
Commencing the retreat, Edward Massaquoi, the Station Manager of UMC Radio, presented plans to enhance the quality and diversity of radio programs, update daily logs, and generate income for the station. He raised concerns about A4 sheet allocation and emphasized the need to acquire antivirus software for the computers.
Following this, Maxwell S. Sayeh, the Editor-In-Chief of the UMC Newsroom, and Shammah P.S. Dorbor, the Coordinator of the UMC Online TV, outlined their ongoing plans to contribute to the overall goals of the department. Sayeh proposed hiring additional staff for news gathering, editing, and production. He also announced an upcoming editing workshop for reporters. Dorbor detailed plans to update the Online TV Facebook platform, provide relevant staff with access, and offer training. He expressed readiness for the annual conference in Bassa, where the Online TV’s work would be showcased.
Bro. Machael Boeglay, Audio Visual Editors, emphasized the need for a newsletter, while Bro. George Johnson, the editor of the Circuit Rider Newspaper, presented plans for the year. Boeglay aimed to write project proposals for funding and produce a regular newsletter to inform stakeholders and the public about department activities. George planned to revive the Circuit Riders newspaper, using existing content from websites and other sources, and promote Bible programs from the radio station on the Facebook page. He intended to print 500 copies of the newspaper for marketing at the annual conference in February.
Bro. Isaac Fred, the Annual Conference Website Editor, submitted a comprehensive plan to Father Togba after the retreat. The plan included stakeholder meetings, content audits, goal setting, restructuring, and redesigning the website with a focus on information architecture and mobile optimization. Ongoing efforts encompassed content creation, SEO optimization, community engagement through social media, user training, documentation, performance monitoring, reporting, maintenance, updates, feedback analysis, and planning for future initiatives.
Finally, Father Togba, the Director of Communications, expressed excitement about the retreat, hoping it would become a departmental culture under his leadership. He urged staff to be diligent, effective, punctual, balanced, fair, and truthful in their reportage. He thanked department partners for their continuous support and instructed staff to include the website address and the Facebook platform whenever reporting news to increase visibility and reach.
The planning retreat was a successful and productive event, showcasing the department’s commitment and readiness to better serve the Liberia Annual Conference of the UMC in 2024.