 Video Conferencing comes to the Generalate: The final touches are being put on a new video conferencing room in the Generalate. Recommendation 46 of the 43rd General Chapter asked “that the government team of the Institute continue to make use of new communication technologies in its work.” We hope the new video conferencing room will help us to fulfil, in part, what the Recommendation was seeking.
In order to facilitate video conferencing in the world wide institute and promote “access by all to these means of communication in the pursuit of the Institute mission,” (Rec. 46) we will compile and publish in the Resources section of our site the places and contact persons responsible for video conferencing in the Lasallian World. I would like to thank the staff of Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona for their help in moving this project along.
Please let us know if your Lasallian institution has video conferencing capability and the email of the person responsible for coordinating conferencing so we can add that information to our list if it is not already there.
(Br. Donald Johanson)
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 Ongoing interview series: Beginning with this notice, in preparation for the 2006 and 2007 assemblies, I will be posting interviews of members of the General Council, Secretaries of the Institute and others. The first interview in this series is with Br. Lorenzo Gónzalez, Secretary General.
You are about to complete two years here in the Generalate as Secretary General. What are your impressions? How do you see the Institute?
I thank God for the opportunity of sharing life here with Brothers and Lay people of such great human and professional caliber. It is a very rich experience of international community. It offers a strong incentive to learn and practice the three languages of the Institute and also Italian, a language which I am liking more and more. We have continued the move to modernize the electronic gear and the communications systems within the House and with the Institute, including videoconferencing services. I realize with pleasure that all of us: Brothers, Volunteers and Staff of the house, are striving to offer the best possible service to the Institute as also to those who visit here for work or as guests. One privilege of being Secretary General is the ongoing contact with the 57 sectors of the Institute. I daily receive a large amount of electronic mail: annual reports, minutes of councils and chapters, electronic District bulletins, various items of information, questions and requests for material. At the level of the Institute I am finding that there is a strong desire to respond with determination and faith to God who is calling us via the educational needs of the poor. For me it is clear that we are experiencing a very challenging period, even though this is coupled with the decrease in the number of Brothers, due above all to the deaths of older Brothers. I am joyfully aware of the growing momentum within the Institute and within Lay people in the 82 countries in which we are present to live authentically our charism of the educational service of the poor.
For yourself in particular, how do you see this movement of association?
I have been taking part in the international Commission of the Associated and I have become aware of the spiritual and apostolic richness which is being lived out in our Lasallian family. Moreover the news coming to us via the Institute web site witnesses to this vitality. The different topics of the MEL booklets are a reflection of the wide range of educational thinking and experience. We are working right now on the Institute Bulletin on the topic of Association and our problem is how to reduce the large amount of reviews, reports and experiences which have been received from those districts especially which are the most active and communicative with regard to Association. Already we are beginning also to get echoes of the Regional Assemblies on association for mission which manifest equally the depth of the reflection and the richness of the dedication of Brothers, Sisters, Priests and Lay people who as Lasallians are committed to the educational mission.
Mention of the Assemblies is an indication that the preparation for the International Assembly of 2006 is already under way. What can you tell us in this regard?
It is a great new idea fostered by the 43rd General Chapter which asked for the setting up of an international Assembly preparatory to the next General Chapter. This international Assembly “Associated for the Lasallian Educational Mission” is going to be a privileged occasion of discernment and communion by the Lasallian family. Together we will be examining the present living out of the experience of Association and of the educational Mission. It will be up to us to seek light and direction for what we are to do, in the Word of God, in the contemporary perspective of Church-Communion and in prayer. In this way the Assembly has to come up with proposing ways of acting which will allow us to respond in ever better ways as Lasallian Brotherhood and Sisterhood to the ever increasing educational needs of our world. The Regional Assemblies, both national and trans-national will certainly form part of this associative momentum which will reach its culmination here in Rome in the 2006 Assembly for which we are already preparing.
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