By Natasha Antoinette Daniel

A Media Camp for the Form 4’s of St. Joseph Church, Sentul was organised by SIGNIS, a  Roman Catholic lay ecclesial movement for professionals in the communication media, including press, radio, television, cinema, video, media education, Internet and new technology. It is a non-profit organization with representation from over 100 countries.

This camp was held in The Champagnat Youth Centre, Port Dickson from 8^th to 10^th June 2018. It was attended by 21 students. The presenters were Sir Augustine Loorthusamy and Raymund Jagan.

The media camp changed the perception about the world and social media and it was useful as it opened our eyes to the world today. We got to realise that the world is not as good and peaceful as we think it is. It has changed dramatically due to the inconsiderate people who run them. We were awakened about how all of us are hooked up to our gadgets and have neglected many other things that happened around us. The camp taught us the advantages and disadvantages of social media and how it can rule our lives. And overuse of social media has distanced our relationships with our immediate family and friends. 

We were also enlightened as to how social media should be used for the right things and also made us realise that our life does not only revolve around things of interest to us but rather to how it can help the society. The presenters also touched on ‘Laudato Si’ the second encyclical of Pope Francis where he speaks about “On Care for Our Common Home”. We had a team work done on the same on how to save the environment which brought us more awareness to make this world a better place to live in.

In this three-day camp we also learned the pros and cons of cyber bullying in social media, which seemed to be a major problem in today’s world. We feel that the situation is so helpless that no one can come to the rescue of the other. It also helped us realise how advertisements influenced our lives so much so we lose our identity.

I personally felt that so much time is wasted when we go surfing and end up spending a whole day browsing the internet with not much gain. On the other hand, the advantage of this media is that we are entertained by the music, movies or news that we read on social media, we are able to reach out to the people who are far away from us and are also able to search for more information on the teachings of the Church and enrich our faith life.

In all I would like to conclude that the media camp has truly brought so much insight that it made us realise the correct use of the media. Lastly I would like to thank all the teachers who took care of us during the camp and the facilitators for sacrificing their time to see a better tomorrow in all of us.

The session ended with Fr. George celebrating Mass. A big thanks to Fr. George.