Every year, the ALL Forum will gather interested young lay leaders, social-pastoral workers during 10 days, often in the month of August. The venue will be rotated, depending on the theme and budgets. The program will consist of the following:
Day 1: Welcome and Present Country Reports
Day 2 – 3: Exposure-Immersion
Day 4: Prepare Reports & Rest
Day 5 – 9: Inputs, Theological reflection, group discussions
Day 10: Action planning & Evaluation
Organizing a team of facilitators and animators, and sending them to a region and a country in which the team as “visiting school” will conduct workshops for youth especially who cannot join ALL Forum about CSTs, documents of Vatican II and FABC according to the needs. It could be a follow up of and complementary program; but it could also be an independent program for those who couldn’t afford to join ALL Forum.
Every year, the pilgrimage will be held in the months of summer & winter vacation, that is, July or August, and January or February for about a week. It will use the same methodology exposure-immersion, dialogue, theological input, prayer and reflection, leading to personal or group action plans. IFF Asia has been taking its students and staff on such “mission projects” every year to countries and places in the region. As the cost of the entire pilgrimage will be borne by the participants, what is shown here is simply the cost of local event coordinators, lecture fees for resource persons, and some logistics costs.
Certain activities will be important here – the annual partners board meeting (BM), the impact assessment (IA), Communication efforts in publishing the forum materials and the annual report (AR), and the on-going staff development (SD). The impact assessment will include surveys, visits to countries and data gathering that will be presented at the Board meeting with the partners and Bishop Patron for future planning. For networking, Dr. Paul Hwang, project director of ALL Forum, will join in various international meetings such as the national gathering of Call To Action (CTA) in the US, Council 50 in Rome and “Christianity in Asia” in India which invites him in the coming November in 2015 respectively.
The ALL Forum will use the famous methodology of “exposure-immersion program” (See/Experience) => “social analysis/theological reflection” (Judge/Understand) => “planning & implementing” (Act/Decide), which is currently being used by all the partners as well as promoted by the FABC. ALL Forum intends to strengthen the methodology by introducing “Asian dimensions” such as contemplation and meditation as well as spirituality from Indigenous Peoples (IPs) especially in the Judge/Understand part. The learning from ALL Forum and implementing the action is then reflected upon and submitted to the organizers as an Evaluation paper.