World Association for Christian Communication

The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) is an international NGO registered as a charity in both Canada and the United Kingdom. It is a worldwide network of ecumenical Christian communicators whose global office is based in Toronto. It is a membership organization bringing together some 1,500 institutions and individuals in more than 100 countries.

WACC’s vision is a world in which communication is recognised by all as a human right and as the basis for peace and social justice.

Organisations and individuals become members of the global Association, organized for practical purposes into eight Regional Associations (Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America and Pacific).

The origins of WACC date back to 1950 when Christian communicators from Europe and North America began seeking guidelines for the future of religious broadcasting. Several organisations, including the World Council of Churches, shared the same concerns and they eventually joined forces to establish the ‘old’ WACC in 1968. Rapid developments in mass media worldwide and a concern to integrate the work of the Agency for Christian Literature Development of the World Council of Churches led to a merger in 1975 that created the present WACC. In 1986 WACC adopted its Christian Principles of Communication as a statement of core values based on Liberation Theology's option for the poor.

WACC’s wide-ranging activities include support for communication projects mainly, but not exclusively, in the global south; the promotion of analysis, reflection and action on important topics related to its areas of concern; support for networking within and beyond its membership; and publication and sharing of information. WACC’s project support has traditionally been largely of a responsive nature. WACC's largest single activity is The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) a worldwide longitudinal study (1995, 2000, 2005) on the representation of women in the world’s media.

Over the last 25 years WACC has been instrumental in developing the concept of Communication Rights and their relationship to participatory development communication.

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