Update on Opening Doors

Opening Doors is part of our response to the challenges facing Mercy today. After wide-ranging consultation, five themes emerged as significant to our Mercy companions: Action for Justice, Communications, Formation, Structures and Youth Engagement.

To date we have held a number of meetings of the Formation Advisory Group. A full suite of Formation resources have now gone live on our website as a result of these meetings. The Formation Group is now in the process of developing a formation pack for those involved in ministry leadership.

Our Communications Committee has also met a number of times and we have now introduced a new Mercy Communications Café to connect and support those working in communications across the Mercy World.

The first meeting of our Youth Engagement Advisory Group took place on Wednesday 29 January. We were delighted to welcome participants from America, Australia, England, Ireland, Kenya and New Zealand. Our discussions at this first meeting centered on our shared experiences of working with young people. The meeting also agreed areas of priority in terms of passing the Mercy Charism onto young people and making connections.

When it comes to our Action for Justice, this year, Mercy Global Action will continue to focus on our priority justice issues: Water, Migration, and Women’s Leadership. We look forward to advancing the Mercy Water Justice Coalition and launching two new Task Forces in preparation for the greatly anticipated Second World Summit for Social Development and COP30 in November.

The final thematic area of Opening Doors is Structures. One of the areas of focus here is to create a global database of Mercy Ministries so that there can be one central master database. This is something that will be looked at this year.

For more on Opening Doors please check out the dedicated section of our website.