Los Angeles Pride Outreach Recap

SCA Los Angeles performed a weekend of outreach at the LGBT Pride festival in West Hollywood 6/12/15 – 6/14/15.

At the Pride festival, there was a special area that orgaziners had set up for fellows in recovery to celebrate in a safe sober space.  This area, #Sizzle, included a DJ and ten carnival games/booths which were supported from various outreach groups supporting recovery and/or prevention in the LGBT community.

This was our first time doing outreach at Pride and it was a great success.  Fellowship volunteers worked shifts to cover the booth and interact with festival attendees. 

We are also following up our outreach to newcomers with a workshop and discussion panel on July 11, 2015 from 10am-12pm at Plummer Park.  This workshop will offer newcomers the opportunity to ask questions and learn about meeting formats, 12-step work and other tools of the program.  Members are being encouraged to attend to offer support and interim sponsorship.

Outreach Committee Report – Doing 12th Step Work for the Global Fellowship

The Outreach Committee handles a number of vital functions, such as our 800-number, PO Box, and email account. Ongoing projects include the sponsor-by-mail prisoner outreach. The committee’s leadership has undergone several turnovers in the past couple years, so additional projects have been on hold. 

Our highest priorities would be reaching out to professional organizations and developing our capacity to respond to media queries. We also want to place SCA ads in relevant apps and online resources, such as recovery blogs, publications, and search engines. To strengthen the outreach committee’s team, we hope to recruit the outreach/12th-step committee chairs from the various Intergroups to join our committee. Another project would be to reach out to the other S-fellowships regarding an agreement not to solicit one another’s members. Finally, we would like to contact other 12-step groups that make referrals, such as AA, and ask them to include SCA. 

We believe that these efforts could significantly impact the growth of our fellowship in the future. The Outreach Committee is always open to people who want to contribute their talents. In particular, we are seeking someone to Chair the committee. Any nominations should be sent to the Inreach Nominating Committee at sca [dot] iso [dot] inreach [at] gmail [dot] com. 

Fiduciary Chair Report

The Fiduciary Chair is the administrative support for SCA,  maintaining the financial records, creating a yearly budget, and safeguarding all the records with archiving responsibilities for prior year records.

We ensure the website is up to date and current, and currently are redoing it and in the redesign stage.  The programming stage will soon follow to get it up and running.

We are also in the midst of moving our archives and trying to get it all electronic and securely stored. We are looking at ways to help pay for our reps to attend the annual face to face meetings so there would be more attendance and feedback at the conference. We already have in place for our officers to get reimbursed for there expense. We are working to make sure we have a private policy in place so that if anyone orders anything through us knows how we gather and use the information that is provided to us. We are also looking into how that information is stored so it doesn’t get lost or hacked into with the information that is gathered.

The Larger Picture – Overview of SCA and the ISO Conference by the Director at Large

This year’s ISO Conference was a resounding success in the view of the ISO Director at Large. The delegates worked well together in a cohesive manner, and tackled the agenda effectively and efficiently. A healthy group conscience was clearly evident throughout the conference. We approved pertinent literature submissions, referred other literature back for additional work, and rejected one piece of draft literature, plus a suggested wording change to one of the Tools of SCA. There was a searching discussion of the limits of the authority of the Executive Committee, and its individual officers, together with the role and authority of the annual ISO Conference itself. Of particular note was a resolution affirming that SCA’s Third Tradition includes all those wishing to recover from sexual compulsion in any and all of its manifold forms of expression, which was passed unanimously.

Focus of the Director at Large report presented to the 2015 ISO Conference and recommendations made to ISO were:

  • Define/expand job description of Director at Large
  • Expand job descriptions of Inreach, Outreach and Fiduciary Committees
  • Continue to support SCA fellowship history project, and its independence
  • Define what constitutes an SCA group and intergroup
  • Continue to prioritize definition and explanation of SCA Steps and Traditions
  • Continue to hold, strengthen and promote quarterly ISO and ISO Committee calls
  • Publicize available service positions
  • Develop ISO Service Manual
  • Promote commitment, stability and continuity in ISO service
  • Formulate plans to improve ISO’s fundraising efforts
  • Continue to prioritize, encourage and support SCA website redesign and upgrade

Conclusion & Summary

The Tools That Help Us Get Better tell us that “Service is a way of helping ourselves by helping others.”  Much of the report had a common thread: ISO needs to promote and support service in general, but also particular areas of service. ISO also needs to encourage commitment, stability and continuity in service. In the way we go about doing service, both as a service board and as individual Trusted Servants, we should not lose sight of the Traditions and core principles of the program. Some ISO service positions and areas need to be better defined.

SCA has no paid special workers. Just as we are self-supporting in financial terms, so must we be self-supporting in the service that is done to keep all the varied areas of the fellowship going. In order to carry the message of recovery, the fellowship needs strong Seventh Tradition contributions from all quarters.

In service,

Kevin B

Inreach Committee: Serving the Fellowship, the Convention, and Year-Round

It was a busy convention for the Inreach Committee.  In the past few years, as an ISO Representative from New York Intergroup, the Inreach Chair, Tony D., had participated in conventions remotely via Calliflower Connect often with disappointing results due to technical glitches.  Plans to attend the convention, hosted by Washington DC Intergroup, were not finalized until Wednesday prior to the start of the convention that weekend. 

Several pieces of literature were put before the assembled Intergroup Representatives for approval as “Conference Approved Literature.”  Some items were rejected for different reasons, others referred back to the Literature Development Subcommittee of Inreach, and one piece approved as presented. 

  • Spiritual Recovery – Rejected
  • Sponsorship – Referred back to committee
  • SCA Q & A Newcomer’s Guide – Referred back to committee for content.  Authors advised that final form to be determined by Fiduciary Committee.
  • Twenty Questions – Referred back to committee
  • The Tools That Help Us Get Better – Rejected
  • Translation of the Yellow Four Fold into German – Approved

Rejecting a piece of literature is not an action that is taken lightly, nor is approving a piece of literature for inclusion in the list of Conference Approved Literature a quick or easy process.  Literature often takes several years of development and revision before being approved at an ISO convention.  The last piece of literature approved was “Avoiding Common Pitfalls,” which took three years.  

We now have Regional Coordinators for each region of the United States, the ex-U.S. Americas, Europe and Africa, and Asia/Oceana.

Regional Coordinators are:

  • The America’s outside the US,  — Kevin B. (Toronto, Canada)
  • Asia/Oceana — Gen S. (Tokyo, Japan)
  • Europe and Africa – John F. (Paris, France)
  • Eastern U.S. – Randy G. (Washington DC)
  • Central U.S. – Jim T. (St. Louis, MO)
  • Western U.S. – Robert B. (Los Angeles, CA)

The Inreach Committee serves as the nominating committee for the fellowship.  The following individuals were elected to office during this past convention.  Zoe M. ISO Chair, Kevin B. Director at Large, Linda E. was elected as Outside Director.   There is one remaining vacancy for Outside Director.  If you know of someone willing to perform that service, please contact Inreach at sca [dot] iso [dot] inreach [at] gmail [dot] com.