[Businessmtg] Newcomers Committee thoughts

[Anne O.]

Good Morning All,

 

Just weighing in now and behind in giving you my Greeter Chair report.  That
will follow with answers to some of the questions posed by others.

 

As I recall, it has been more than a year since the Newcomers committee met.
As a small group, it was difficult to get all members to participate and it
was difficult to track the brainstorming activity.  Emails came in at all
hours of the day and there were spans of inactivity as well.   The first
hurdle to overcome was to define the audience and how to separate out the
needs of both.

 

Existing Al-Anon members who were newcomers to ASP and online meetings vs.
Newcomers to Al-Anon (also new to online meetings)

 

We probably should have tackled that first!

 

Here are my thoughts:

 

.         Anyway.. I think after being greeter chair for several months, I
think we could make some changes to our welcome to help those new to online
meetings and provide links to Al-Anon resources for newcomers.  That might
satisfy the need to provide more direct support to our newcomers.

.         I also think that as Al-Anon's we have a tendency to want to fix
things for others.  Each new member is responsible for their own recovery
and need to do the work to get there.  Thinks of the saying.   "Al-Anon
works if you work it and you are worth it."  We need to be sure we are
providing the tools and that they are accessible, the rest is up to the
newcomer.  For example: a sponsor list is not appropriate, but providing the
tools to a newcomer to learn how to ask a member to be their sponsor is.

.         In my estimation the biggest void for newcomers in these meetings
is that there is no lending library during the meeting.  At every F2F I have
attended CAL is available.  And many (almost all) have CAL chosen by the
meeting chair to support their topic and the material is passed around the
room for reference.  There are no copyright concerns so the member gets the
full page/pages to reference as part of their share.  I don't know how we
fix that!

 

Finally, if this temporary committee motion continues to live, then I
believe they need to start over and be committed and focused.  I think it
would be great for the business meeting members to identify the audience and
a select list of topics that are an outcome of brainstorming here so that
the committee isn't starting with a "whiteboard" so to speak.

 

Hugs,

 

Anne