Increase public awareness and understanding of the year of mercy through sustained media engagement This Project seeks to develop newspaper and social media platforms as a means to enhance the advocacy work of the church and its stakeholders, to communicate the message of the church to society and to help propagate human rights and call for government accountability to the citizens of Zimbabwe.

As the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe becomes increasingly unbearable a more robust intervention is needed by the church before political intolerance and poor governance results in an unmanageable crisis. The church has to encourage people and to direct them in times of crisis.  The position of the Church need to be made known and media tools are channels through which the voice of the church can be heard. Social media tools and publications have been identified as useful means to give a voice to the voiceless and to give a platform where the poor can express their views without fear or favour. In this regard the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Social Communications Commission has started a newspaper that is meant to spearhead advocacy for political tolerance, good governance, peace and reconciliation with special attention to the Year of Mercy. This newspaper needs to be complimented by other media platforms and social media in advancing the process of peace and reconciliation. The Church feels that there would be an information gap as a result of non availability of information mediums and thus the Catholic newspaper was founded to compliment other information platforms. It will be an important tool of engagement, challenging the accountability of government and those in leadership positions. With climate change affecting many people especially in this country, the newspaper and other media tools like websites and social media will be important in raising awareness on the effects of this new phenomenon. People especially those in rural areas need to be prepared and alerted about impending disasters. The newspaper will be a national project since it will cover all dioceses which means the whole country while social media messages will be directed to all those who possess modern media technologies in form of watsapp and text messages.  

Raising awareness is on the major issues of the day such as climate change, inequality and poverty which are the concerns of the year of Mercy is pertinent. The government also needs to know how the situation is like in different parts of the country without bias as in government papers. With the vast work the church is doing in Zimbabwe, it is important to have media tools that support its activities by highlighting its contribution to the underprivileged. The Church is a major stakeholder in this country, hence its voice should be heard loud and clear through public media such as a newspaper, websites and social media that will represent those who are often neglected and marginalized. More and more information is going unrecorded in the Church while awareness is still lacking in many parts of the country that many people are ignorant about what affects them. Because of lack of informative and educative information, there is a widening gap between the rich and the poor with the ideology of the rich becoming dominant in all circles. Different arms of the church support the livelihoods of the Zimbabwean population while the church fights for justice and peace for the poor majority. With Climate Change affecting the country people want to be made aware and warned about impending disasters.