The staff of St. Augustine’s Institute is involved in giving outreach programs in the different dioceses, religious institutes and other lay organizations. Some of the inputs given in the recent past include directed and guided retreats, seminars on Sacred Liturgy, Managing Stress and Burnout, Pastoral Administration, Teachers as Role Models (given to secondary school teachers), Counseling and guidance, Priests/Religious relationships, etc.
This year the Uganda Episcopal Conference approved a proposal made by St. Augustine Institute staff, of an outreach program due to the following reasons:
Whereas a residential course may receive one or two priests attending from a particular diocese, and whereas most of the dioceses do not sent candidates at all, an outreach program to a particular diocese given on the occasion of a diocesan gathering of the clergy may reach as many as fifty priests at once.
During the giving of outreach inputs we have the opportunity to directly speak to the priests in the various dioceses and to give them first-hand information about the programs offered at St. Augustine’s institute, in the hope of wooing them to attending them in the future. We will also carry booking forms which we bring back at the institute and remind the priests at appropriate times.
Outreach inputs will last only one day, so we can give a number of them in the year. If fact by dividing ourselves out we can reach all the dioceses in the country within one year.
The outreach program is not a substitute but a complement to the residential courses.
The whole design of the outreach program is meant to enrich the pastoral agents with the rich treasure of contemporary papal teaching on present-day issues which every evangelizer cannot afford to be ignorant about.