(Please also see the minutes from our monthly call on the repository.)

I’ve had computer problems this month so life got in the way. This month has been extremely important to me. I would like to thank Jeffrey from Prague for joining the Committee. At long last we are going somewhere. His professional view on things has really made my vision come true. It has always been the plan to set up a structure for the European Fellowship and after lengthy talks with Jeffrey asking a lot of important questions we are on our way. 

This month has mostly been calls. I’ve been in contact with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and Spain.

 

One of the most frequently asked questions is: “How we prevent the use of our logo on non-approved meetings or literature? 

To understand what is going on, we need to address the fact that many fellowships have developed their own literature to use in their local country. This comes from not having the BRB and this happened before there was any BRB. Many fellowships took a little from the Blue Book, or from other fellowships all in a mix. The BRB has been out for ten years next year, but because of the lack of translations many fellowships in Europe are still using what they know. So what they perceive to be ACA literature is non-approved literature. The transition is happening but I don’t see it completed anytime soon.

In Denmark we had a workbook called “A way out”. Members still use this one although we have the BRB and the Yellow Workbook in Danish for 2 years. What we did was organize workshops all over the country when we got the Yellow Workbook. But two years in we are still in transition to ACA approved literature. Good Sponsors might not have completed the 12 steps in the Yellow Workbook. The newcomers are very choosy and they want to do the step work “the RIGHT way”, but ultimately the YWB doesn’t sufficiently deal with the character defects, so members still use “A way out” to supplement their step work, and until the LLWB is translated they will do so.

The point I’m making is that by group conscious the fellowship can make a decision to use as much translated approved ACA literature as possible. But I don’t see members going back to use an English book if they have done the meetings in their own language prior to the BRB coming out. And I’m not talking about all the English speaking meetings all over Europe. But the fact of the matter is; members want the BRB in their own language. And the process we have in place is very slow, so matters like the ones above will occur. 

Poland is especially worried for their fellowship because it’s been common practice the ACAs are doing the step work from their AA translated Blue Book and calling it ACA. They are concerned for newcomers and rightly so. 

In Finland this fall the Finns had the same problem. Their ACA is called AAL. But they made the decision to change their name to ACA and use only the approved literature. The most important point being that they also have their translation completed in Finnish.

So one of the main issues we will work on is to provide the fellowship with ways of connecting and getting the support they need in this transition period from a platform we are trying to develop. We expect to present the fellowship with our plan at the ABC 2016.  

The Danes are wondering how their order is going. Do we know where we are at?  Sweden and Lithuania is wondering why it takes so long to change their meeting information. I wrote to Gloria asking her to help me solve this.  Both countries have written numerous times they tell me?

Spain is joining our EC. I got a nice letter from them this month. They stated that they wanted to do service on a EU level. It’s so nice to see the fruit of all the hard work being done.