Quarterly Report, July-Sept 2004

Three issues were reviewed by the Board during the October 2004 Board Meeting.

1. Meeting format changes. Two changes to the generic FA meeting format were proposed and considered over this past quarter. Both were unanimously approved by the Board and will be incorporated into the meeting format at the GSO office. Please consider these changes at your meeting level at your next business meeting, and incorporate them into your format if your meeting’s group conscience votes to do so.
   
   
   1. Change One: The tool of literature. The tool currently reads, “…we study AA literature to strengthen and reinforce our program.” We actually use FA Conference-approved literature that includes certain pieces of AA literature. Therefore, the new wording for the tool will be, “We study FA Conference-approved literature to strengthen and reinforce our program.”
      
      
   2. Change Two: The current format states, in the introduction to “How It Works” and the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, that FA is based upon the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Actually, FA is based upon the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, but is actually, in practice, a profoundly different program of recovery. Therefore, the new language will read: “FA is based upon the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous.”

3. The proposed FA census. The GSO Public Information Committee proposed doing a formal FA census, for the purpose of obtaining information that may be desirable and useful for providing members of various professional communities (e.g., medical, educational, other) with quantified information about the demographics and growth of FA. There was initial discussion by the Board as to whether such a project would break anonymity, and it was determined by a consensus of the Board that only with careful and sensitive selection of questions, as well as presentation of such questions, would a census safely avoid violation of the Twelfth Tradition. The Board then spent a significant amount of time reviewing the proposed questions, vetoing some outright, agreeing on some, and addressing others with further discussion. Ultimately, the following questions were selected to be included in the proposed census: Residence, Age (with ranges), Gender, Length of time working the FA program (with footnote giving additional explanation), Length of back-to-back FA abstinence, Length of time at goal weight, How I found out about FA, and FA helps me address problems with: A) Bulimia, B) Anorexia, C) Bingeing/overeating, D) Obesity, E) Restricting, and/or F) Body image obsession.
4. Telephone meetings. The Twelfth Step Committee chair was contacted by an FA member requesting a review of the idea of FA meetings via the telephone. The Board has reviewed this issue one other time, during 2003. Because the Board is made up of new members, and because the issue is one in which several members have voiced an interest, the GSO chair brought it to the entire GSO Board for further discussion. The unanimous consensus of both the current and the prior Boards was that telephone meetings would violate a number of FA Traditions, and also the spirit of the freedom from isolation that live meetings engender in the individual FA member. The Board encourages any FA members who wish to connect through the telephone to hold conference calls, and invite any interested fellowship to attend. But these conference calls should never, in the opinion of the GSO, take the place of committed, in-person meetings, and will not be allowed to register as an FA meeting. These calls would, however, be a wonderful use of the tool of the telephone, and would no doubt serve to connect members living in remote areas, who are, we know, very much in need of fellowship with other food addicts. A letter responding to the inquiry was written by the Twelfth Step Committee and reviewed by the GSO executive board. That letter is included at the end of this Report.

FA Chapter Manual ad hoc Committee (Carol C., ad hoc chair)

The FA Chapter Manual has been completed and approved by the GSO Board. It will be available by December 2004 through the FA Office and will be distributed to attendees at the NEI Chapter Forum in December.

Conference/Convention Committee (Adrienne C., chair)

The 2005 GSO Business Conference will be held June 3-5, 2005, at the SheratonFerncroft Hotel in Danvers, Massachusetts. The deadlines for business motions that will be brought to the conference are as follows: FA groups will be notified 7 months in advance of the conference (i.e., by December 3, 2004) regarding proper procedure for raising motions at the conference.The deadline for submitting new business motions will be five months before the conference. Four months prior the conference, all of the motions which have been submitted will be sent out to all of the groups to be voted on in a yes/no questionnaire. Each group must send the results of the yes/no votes to the Conference Committee two months prior to the conference. All groups will be notified six months in advance of the conference about how members can apply for vacant GSO officer and committee chair positions. Applications will be due three months in advance of the conference, and copies of completed applications will be sent to groups 45 days prior to the conference for the body to consider. Open positions will be announced by the Conference Committee in forthcoming correspondence. The voter delegate’s forms will be mailed to the groups three months prior to the conference and will be due back five weeks before the conference begins. 

Literature Committee (Meghann G., chair) 

19 Stories have been collected for the FA Book of Stories. The committee also drafted a purpose statement for book, began reviewing the submitted stories, and discussed how to approach volunteer editors and graphic designers in FA for help with pamphlets/Book of Stories.

Office Committee (Jennifer N., chair)

The committee performed the duties of the office during Sharon’s absence due to her family’s tragedy, worked with our outsource printer company to address the high rate of theconnection magazine returns by using a heavier material for the cover, and is currently working with the GSO Bylaw Committee to update and clarify the list of approved literature for literature tables.

Teens and Twenties Committee (Jennifer K., chair)

The Western Area Intergroup Teens and Twenties (WAI T&T) Committee completed mailings to Bay Area colleges in August. A work party at our last committee meeting signed and prepared letters to go out to all the Bay area schools in October. Mailing lists were updated. There was a speaker event this past month at a major high school in San Francisco with rave reviews from the administration. This was our third year and sixth speaking event there. They invited us to return. Our committee has received responses to our mailing from private colleges for literature to be displayed. We are regrouping our tri-fold brochure T&T rack coordination as we have a new Chair. Our Policies and Procedures were updated using GSO Conference-approved Policies and Procedures  and adding WAI T&T pertinent information. They were presented and accepted by WAI membership at the October meeting. 

theconnection Committee (Joanna S., chair)

There will be a special holiday subscription discount for the month of January 2005. Starting now and during January, subscriptions will be $18 rather than $20, and multiple subscriptions will be at a cost of only $15 for every subscription after the first. The committee wishes to remind the groups to announce the magazine at every meeting, since many newcomers and not-so-newcomers are not aware of the magazine’s existence! Also, if you would like to send a submission, or have an idea for the committee, please send any articles or ideas to connectionchair@yahoo.com.

Chapter Liaison Committee (Bonnie H., chair)

Bonnie H., interim committee chair, will be attending the December 12, 2004 New England Intergroup chapter forum in Malden, MA, and will prepare a summary of the day’s events for the January 2005 GSO Board Meeting.

Twelve Concepts ad hoc Committee (Susan L., ad hoc chair)

The Twelve Concepts Committee continues to meet weekly via teleconference, and will continue doing so through December. At that point, we hope and expect to have completed both the short form (which is one meeting away from completion), and the long form of the FA Twelve Concepts. We expect therefore to be able to propose the motion to accept these as our Concepts to the fellowship in time for the February 3, 2005 New Business Motion deadline.

Twelfth Step Committee (Maggie M., chair)

The FA GSO Newsletter, Gratitude in Action, will be sent to all GSO contacts quarterly. This goal has not been completely met as no issue was mailed this summer due to lack of person power to produce the material needed. There was discussion among committee members regarding the newsletter’s visibility. There is a sense that not a lot of members know about the newsletter and that it is not getting to the literature tables at meetings. One solution with the present issue will be to provide a separate letter in large print asking GSO contacts to copy and make the newsletter available to members at their meetings.

Letter from Twelfth Step Committee Regarding Telephone FA Meetings

Dear _______: 

I am writing to respond to your request for FA to use phone meetings.  This subject was discussed at the Twelfth Step Committee conference call held recently, as well as at the GSO Board meeting held on October 24, 2004.  The issue was also discussed last year by the GSO Board. In light of your inquiry, however, and also in light of the fact that the GSO Board has a new membership since last year’s discussion, we felt it was worth reviewing the issue for a second time. As with last year’s Board, however, the current GSO Board concluded unanimously that FA meetings may not be held over the telephone. The reasons for this decision are listed below. 

• Members in remote areas will benefit more from attending AA meetings than through using a phone meeting. Food addiction is a disease of isolation, and the recovery that comes from getting out of one’s home environment and actually being in the presence of other recovering addicts is critical to recovery from food addiction. Unlike alcoholics in AA, who may be able to recover through phone calls and literature, we have found over the years that live, in-person connections with other addicts in recovery is indeed an essential part of recovery in FA. Furthermore, food addicts still wishing to isolate may be enabled by the option of telephone meetings to continue in that isolation. . These reasons were supported by two of the Twelfth Step Committee members living in different remote areas in Canada. These members do not have the benefit of local FA meetings.

• Financing phone meetings is complicated. Who would pay for the conference line? How would attendees donate to the Seventh Tradition?  Experience with phone AWOLs and GSO committee conference calls has shown that conference call fees are expensive, more expensive than many FA members could afford realistically, and it may be difficult for a phone meeting to stay solvent. This issue may also present a problem with the Third Tradition, since only members who could afford to pay for the call could attend.

The GSO Board and the Twelfth Step Committee encourage any FA members who wish to connect through the telephone to hold conference calls, and invite any interested fellowship to attend. But these conference calls should never, in the opinion of the GSO, take the place of committed, in-person meetings. These calls would, however, be a wonderful use of the tool of the telephone, and would no doubt serve to connect members living in remote areas, who are, we know, very much in need of fellowship with other food addicts. 

Once again, after reviewing your request, the GSO Board has decided that FA meetings may not be held via the telephone. Lastly, thank you, __________, for your willingness to do service, and for your commitment to spreading recovery. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss this further. 

Warm regards, 
Maggie M., Chair, GSO Twelfth Step Committee