[Businessmtg] Questions

[Jerry H.]

Biz-Pals,

Two of Karen C's questions require that ASP's practices be clarified. I'll attempt to do so here.


When ASP passed Motion #4 - approving the continuation of past policies and practices when we transitioned from private ownership to ownership by the group - the policies were well spelled out, but the practices were not. In order to have the practices related to ASP's qualifications for Steering Committee service more understandable I first have to review the reasoning behind them.

ASP, though not an Al-Anon Group as defined by the Service Manual, is an Al-Anon "Meeting." On-line Al-Anon Meetings have yet to be fit into the Al-Anon structure; last I heard in conversation with a pair of Delegates was the WSO and WSC are slowly working on where meetings like ASP stand in the fellowship's structure.

While the WSO tried to figure out what to do with us, ASP moved ahead and created our own internal service structure. Our structure is more along the lines of an Area's or the WSO's structure. A hybrid of the two would be about accurate. In the Al-Anon structure there are requirements for trusted service leadership positions in order to assure that candidates have the understanding, experience, and knowledge necessary to do the job. In order to stand for District Rep one must be a Group Rep; to stand for Delegate to the WSC one must be a current or past District Rep (in my Area one must have completed a full three-year term as DR), as examples. ASP requires that in order to stand for one of ASP's leadership positions on the Steering Committee that a combined total of one year's ASP service in other ASP leadership roles is necessary.

So what does ASP consider a leadership role? Attending Business Meetings and participating as a member of a committee is service, but not in a leadership role. Past Steering Committee members clearly qualify. Chairing a Business Meeting or an ASP Committee would be leadership. Another way ASP has defined leadership positions is that a candidate's past ASP service experience is in either an elected or an appointed position. This qualifies both Greeters and Daily Meeting Chairs who have a minimum of one year's combined experience in these services.

As regards Al-Anon service outside of ASP: Any prior Al-Anon service experience can be considered when Business Meeting members vote for candidates for ASP's service positions, but only prior ASP leadership positions as outlined above can fulfill ASP's requirements to stand for election to an office which results in a membership on ASP's Steering Committee.

That pretty much sums up ASP's practices regarding qualifications for our leadership positions. Hope this helps.

Jerry
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On May 10, 2018 at 1:16 PM kacasp17--- via Businessmtg wrote:

Morning bmASPers....

Anne...I have a couple of questions that i would like to ask. Leadership may also need to address these questions.

1. Can you tell us what other " trusted servant" positions you have filled on asp. (as we know from the last position of secretary, we had to overlook the business meetings as experience regardless of how long we participate in them. We had issues with accepting committee participation as service. We were also told that daily chairing does not qualify for time as a trusted servant.) I am just looking for clarification here.



1. This question might need to be addressed by others in charge....we know this is not considered a f2f group. There are a great many of us on this site that attend and participate in our f2f groups, including service positions, but those groups are not ASP. Are we allowed to count that as service towards ASP trusted servant experience since it was not part of ASP.



1. How much experience do you have doing actual web page work in this type of group. As for your cybersecurity degree, how do you see that adding to the security of the web page. How do you think your work on your internal work pages will lend to your knowledge for the current ASP website.



Thanks for reading and Anne and thanks for stepping up.

hugggsss,

karen c