Sisters expand reach with multimedia

By Nick Hanson
The Free Press

MANKATO May 13, 2007 12:42 am

— Sister Julie Brandt’s job is to attract young women to the religious life.
But the vocation director for the School Sisters of Notre Dame Mankato satellite is doing it a bit differently these days.
Like with her new blog called “Simple Jottings.”
The 44-year-old nun writes about relationships, myths surrounding life at the convent and even the weather on a warm spring day.
While her staple approach remains traveling to schools and conventions in search of new postulants, it’s only logical to use tools of the technologically savvy generation to attract and spread the good word, she said.
“If you’re trying to appeal to them, why not use their language?” Sister Brandt said. “It’s a new way of reaching out and explaining who we are.”
It’s working, too.
Sister Brandt has been communicating via e-mail with several interested women who discovered more about the School Sisters of Notre Dame online. She plans to meet with one of them in the coming weeks.
Brandt’s blog, however, is just the first step in a new wave of multimedia projects scheduled to hit the Mankato Good Counsel convent.
Future projects may include podcasts, YouTube videos with testimonials about the vocation process and sisters with MySpace Web accounts.
The trend is hitting other religious communities across the United States. More than a dozen have adopted some type of multimedia interaction to spread their mission and message, said Ruth Jackson, communications director for the Mankato School Sisters of Notre Dame.
It’s a smart move because the Internet is often the first place curious young woman look for information about religion, Jackson said.
As a member of the National Communicators Network for Women Religious — an organization that works to promote and advance women who are in religious communities — Jackson is helping plan a September conference in Rapid City, S.D., that will focus on ways to use the virtual world and online social networks to improve communication for sisters.
Multimedia could also prove a useful tool to connect with lay people who are interested in activities happening at the Mankato Good Counsel convent and make it easier to gather information about Mass, workshops, volunteering opportunities, sisters services and simply visiting.
Good Counsel will consider any new technology that may help boost its mission and programming, said Sister Catherine Bertrand, the Mankato School Sisters of Notre Dame provincial leader.
“We believe in human interaction and face-to-face contact, but we are part of this culture and it would be a mistake not to take advantage of that to spread what we think is good news,” Bertrand said.
The sisters have made other recent technological upgrades including a new Web site and regularly hosting video conferences to increase contact with other satellites and reduce traveling costs.
“We have always tried to be innovative in the ways we connect with people,” Bertrand said.

Check out theses Web sites to see how sisters from all over are utilizing multimedia and the Internet to spread their message.
n Sister Julie’s “Simple Jottings” blog: http://www.ssndmankato.org/blog/
n “A Nun’s Life Blog” http://nuns2day.wordpress.com/
n Podcast from St. Paul: http://www.csjstpaul.org/content.asp?id=2505
n MySpace profile: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=60028675
n You Tube Web videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiRiz-mjiiA

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