Update on VOTF’s Strategic Plan

Currently the Platform leadership teams are exploring the following topics/issues. As each team finalizes its plans, they will establish the priorities and specific steps for the projects selected to move forward:

Local Action Platform

• Best Practices for Parishes

• Financial Transparency in the Parish

• Pastoral Selection

• Safe Environments in the Parish

• Building Strong Affiliates

• Affiliate Communications Toolkit

• National Parish Database

• Closing & Merging Parishes

Reform Actions to Protect Children and Support Survivors

• Statute of limitation reform

• Local Survivor support and Victim Awareness

• Collaboration with advocates for survivors and children as well as liaison with the survivor community

• Community efforts to protect children

Universal Church Reform

• Promulgating a Catholics bill of rights

• The selection process for bishops

• Engaging youth

• Improving VOTF external and internal communications

Networking and Partnerships

• Focusing on reaching out to other Catholic organizations to better understand them and their priorities and have them understand us and ours.

• Identifying principles of engagement with other organizations.

• Where our respective (and collective) goals share common ground, engage with them in a defined action on that one issue (not subscribing completely in their mission), to create an action with critical mass.

• Developing a contact and history database on our findings as a resource tool for other platform teams.

Spiritual and Communal Growth

• Establish a Resource devoted to prayer and prayer experiences that is grounded in Christian tradition.

• Promote Development of an Interactive Prayer Community; using a blog with links to and from VOTF's website.

• Project VOTF's presence within the Catholic Community by promoting and scheduling face-to-face community events, such as VOTF Solidarity Sunday, and celebration of a VOTF patron, such as John XXIII.

• Combine these 3 goals into an interactive Resource Capability that fosters spiritual and communal growth among the entire faith community.

Each team has been attentive to the guiding principles set forth in the Strategic Plan, namely, that all proposed initiatives and activities must be:

• Consistent with our mission, goals and identity statement,

• Responsive to the findings of our SWOT analysis, and

• Have a reasonable expectation that what is proposed can actually be accomplished.

Additionally, each initiative must engage and energize our membership, tapping into our collective gifts and talents to result in maximum participation.