[Businessmtg] Group Representative Report - April 2026 BM

Thu Apr 2 06:51:01 PDT 2026

Hello Business meeting,

Thank you for letting me be of service.

Below is my GR report for the April 2026 ASP business meeting.  If there are any questions, feel free to email me.

I thought it would be a good idea to show a brief summary of the Al-Anon structure below.  Please refer to the "Al-Anon Service manual" for further information at the following website https://al-anon.org/for-members/members-resources/manuals-and-guidelines/.

Firstly, groups are the base of Al-Anon, with Districts as the next level where representatives of the groups meet to discuss issues affecting them and the district, as well as Al-Anon in general.  The next level is the Areas, which are mostly states, however some of the larger states having more than one Area.    The GR from each group attends District and GEA meetings.

ASP is in District 53.   About 4 years ago, there was a discussion to form the GEA (Global Electronic Area) for the electronic meetings to have a "voice" in Al-Anon, because before GEA they did not have a voice in Al-Anon matters.   The GEA decided to limit all districts in the GEA to 20 groups.  This created problems in many districts to staff in the usual service positions.  Many groups have died in the last few years leaving only 10-15 groups/district today.

Ideally, the GROUPS, through their informed GRs, should be thoroughly involved in the Al-Anon discussion and given sufficient time and information to make an informed group's conscience.  It is the GRs that make the final decisions based on their discussion of all the information.

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Groups. We have 15 groups in District 53.  Each group has a different title, format, and different numbers.

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Districts.  We are in District 53.  This is the first link from the groups to the Area, the WSO, and the World Service Conference.  Al-Anon put the whole Global Electronic Area together by putting groups into clusters.  There are 55 Districts and each have about 10-15  groups in it.

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Areas.
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Area World Service Conference (AWSC); each area has one.   The Areas are big, like Northern California, which contains about 28 districts.  They can be clusters of several states’ groups.  GEA is one of the areas now.

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Global Electronic Area, (GEA). Still developing. There are 55 Districts in GEA.
This GEA was formed about 4 years ago, to give the people who belong to non-geographically linked meetings a voice.  Then email groups, phone groups, Facebook or zoom, or text groups can be in it.  They are NOT geographically linked.  Then members can be from all over the world through electronic media.   The GEA is a way for all of our groups to vote,  to have input into Al-Anon.

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World Service Office, (WSO).  The principal service center of the fellowship, the WSO, acts in conformity with the wishes of the Conference.  They also handle the business and legal items of the fellowship.

1.The first D53 meeting in 2026 was on January 17, 2026, which I missed.  Below is a brief summary from the meeting minutes.
For further information please see "01/17/2025 District Meeting Minutes" at the following website ASP Group Representative <https://asp-afg.org/members/group-representative-updates/>                  Informational Page | ASP Members Only Web Site<https://asp-afg.org/members/group-representative-updates/>.   

*A main concern for groups, the district, and area is not getting enough volunteers for service.  We cannot force people to participate; we can keep encouraging them.

*Discussion of Knowledge Based Discussion Making (KBDM) in District 53

*There is concern about the WSO being more directive than responsive to the groups, in that the amount of time given to the area meeting was 50% devoted to Administrative issues, and there is little time for discussion. So doing email work, giving time for reflection and discussion is a big and important concern. Giving KBDM in the emails and then getting all information to ALL members matters. If no consensus is reached, we need to resume discussion at the next meeting. No vote happens until there has been full discussion, not just in breakout rooms.

*After discussion, we decided that all of us in this meeting will send notes to Angel with our thoughts about this issue, and about any other things she should bring up with our Area leader, Burt, at the next meeting. We tabled any further discussion of a District-sponsored workshop/meeting on KBDM for now.

2.D53 meeting, 2/21/2026.   Below is a summary of the meeting highlights.   For further information please see "02/21/2026 District    Meeting Minutes" at the following website ASP Group Representative Informational Page | ASP Members Only Web Site<https://asp-afg.org/members/group-representative-updates/>.

*There are 15 Al-Anon groups in District 53.
*The Area World Service Committee (AWSC) meeting will be on February 28.  There will be more information at our next quarterly meeting.
*There has been a suggestion for District 53 to be a subdivision on the WSO computer platform.    Further discussion is forthcoming.
*The Global Electronic Area (GEA) is in its 3rd year almost the 4th year of formation and is still developing.    In the Al-Anon structure, ideas and decisions are made from the bottom up.   The GEA seems like a hierarchy, top-down, which is against Tradition 2 and Tradition 4.  Further exploration of the structure and operation will be forth coming.
*Tradition 2:  For our group purpose there is but one authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants—they do not govern.
*Tradition 4:  Each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting another group or Al‑Anon or AA as a whole.
*There are vacancies among the trustees at the region/area level.   The filling of these vacancies is lengthy, and the idea is to streamline the process for regional trustees, so we can get more applications.  More information will be coming in the future.

3.D53 meeting, 3/21/2026.  Below is a summary of the meeting highlights.  For further information please see "03/21/2025 District Meeting Minutes" at the following website ASP Group Representative <https://asp-afg.org/members/group-representative-updates/> Informational Page | ASP Members Only Web Site<https://asp-afg.org/members/group-representative-updates/>.   

*Jerry, Alt DR, sat in on the 2/28/2026 meeting for Angel our DR.
*WSO wants our website under their domain, so they have more oversight.   1) legal issues, it may be better; 2) technical issues.
*Approved GEA having a website under WSO domain, not final yet.

*Recommended:  Develop a thought and task force on the issue.   The thought force will bring forward the various possibilities, the task force will discuss and a decision made later.   This is just a recommendation, more information will be forthcoming.

*Regarding the trustee election process change.   The goal is to streamline the selection process of Trustees in Al-Anon.  As the GR, I was leaning toward voting for Option 3, and after reviewing several times.  I voted for Option 1.  Option 3 was approved with 67% of votes.  A brief summary is below.  For further information, see "Single Process Trustee Selection" at the following website ASP Group Representative Informational Page | ASP Members Only Web Site<https://asp-afg.org/members/group-representative-updates/>.  

Definitions:
TAL =Trustee at Large (TAL)
RT = Regional Trustee (RT)
CCT = Conference Committee on Trustees (CCT) scores Trustee at Large applications
RCT = Regional Committee on Trustees (RCT).  After the Area has approved the Regional application and the Delegate                notifies the WSO of the approval, all applications received within a Region are reviewed and
scored by that Region's Regional Committee on Trustees (RCT).

*Option One: This option would redefine the composition of CCT to include the geographic and/or Regional voice across panels and expand its mandate to review all Trustee applications. Option One would eliminate the unique step of gaining RT application approval by the Area, relying instead on an expanded definition of the CCT that includes geographic representation to carry the Regional voice during application review.
*Option Two: This option would still invite both the CCT and RCTs to score applications; however, the RCT mandate would be expanded to include all applicants from their Region and the CCT mandate would be expanded to include all applicants. Option Two would eliminate the unique step of gaining RT application approval by the Area, relying instead on Trustee applications being reviewed concurrently by both the CCT and an RCT from their respective Region. In other words, each application would be reviewed by members of three Committees rather than two.
*Option Three: This option would maintain the CCT as is but expand its mandate to include reviewing all Trustee applications. Option Three would eliminate the unique step of gaining RT application approval by the Area, relying instead on a new process to obtain objections from all the Area Delegates in each candidates’ Region.

*The historical process has been:

*The GRs in each Area in a Region nominate a Past Delegate to serve as a Regional Trustee.
*Representatives from each Area select one of the nominees to serve as their Regional Trustee.

*We have approval to set up websites under the WSO domain.

4. GEA Tech Coordinator
*They stopped all posts to the group.io website and it happened abruptly because the GEA has been suspended twice for too much email being sent out.   GEA will be barred from group.io if we overload it again.   Therefore, they had to stop others from posting to the website.

5. 3 GEA conferences this year.  1) May 12, 2) July 18, 3) Sept 26.

 6. Other Al-Anon info:

*Website.  Few things are better than a decent website for making information available to the groups, their GR's and even the regular members of the district.  The GRs easily reached a consensus on our need to have a website, which is now live District 53 of the Global Electr<https://district53afg.org/>. The website provides a wide variety of info for the members of District 53: the groups of District 53 (group name, platform, GR name and email, how to contact the group and the WSO number of the group), contact information for all District and GEA officers, an archive of all District 53 meeting agendas & meeting minutes.

*District 53 has a mailing list for our GRs and District officers.  This makes it easy for any of us to communicate with the rest of the         trusted servants in District 53.  With the mailing list, each of us only needs to know one email address for District 53 and the server         handles the rest, and only the server needs to be updated.

7. The following items are for District 53:

 *Important news was that WSO, World Service Office,  will not enforce policy on group names and hold a moratorium on this question     until 2026.

*E-books for CAL are coming, but for now they have books for sale, and don't want to undercut the book sales of developing AL-Anon        programs, so are waiting to see when it will be appropriate to introduce them.  The sale of CAL is the primary source of funding for        WSO.   As a result, WSO is very reluctant to do anything that will impact the sales of CAL.

*AL-ANON'S 75TH anniversary is 2026 and a new service manual is available.  The latest edition of the Service Manual is published        every 3 years.  Unlike other types of CAL, the Service Manual is revised frequently by WSO.  For example, WSO has published the 4th version of the 2022-2025 Service Manual.  The following link has the service manual:
https://al-anon.org/for-members/members-resources/manuals-and-guidelines/.

Again, thank you for letting me be of service.

With regard,
Kathleen H
ASP - GR