The Report for the European Committee for July and August is as follows.

The EC is undergoing mayor renewal. For the first time ever we are dealing with a very large body of volunteers stepping up, as previously reported, this process started in Malmö at the AWC, where we had a workshop. As the chair I am rotating off of the European Committee in April 2020.

The EC was an experiment based on a vision of connecting the existing and the new fellowships in Europe, it was started in 2014 and it became so much more than I could ever imagine, there's no other committee like it.  And for that reason it has been really import to me to hand over all the accumulated knowledge we have gathered in supporting the European fellowship over the past five years  to the next generation of trustees .

This process began like any other process of building a committee when people are stepping up to do service. Usually we have an idea of what service is, because it is described in our literature, but in the EC we have had to come with new ways to carry the message, which meant that we had to make new procedures, I would even go as far as saying, a new way of thinking, a new way of printing had to created in Europe because of the huge shipping fees. In turn it made the Board of WSO rethink their distribution of literature. This is still an ongoing process. The EC had an influence in how the WSO is now thinking about literature because of the EC involvement of translation processes in Europe, the WSO are producing a more reader/translation friendly smaller version of the BRB.

Translations were, before I got involved with the Board,  something that was handed in to the WSO, there were no procedures for support in place. Let alone the support of new fellowships translating their literature once they had received a Literature Starter Kit.

All this to say that the hand over is taking place. The new EC sent out a letter  " A call to serve" about a month ago, it is posted in here on the WSO website. Should there be anyone out there listning in who is willing to service on the EC please write to me at [email protected].

In Minsk last month the EC had their annual european event. The Belarusian fellowship held their 10th anniversary and was attended by the largest amount to date 159 ACA members. About 12 members from Europe attended the business planning meeting face to face and others joined in via Zoom. Among other things we discussed the criteria for trustees on the EC based on the document from the Nominating Committee, for board members, and adjusted it for the EC based on what we need. Please read the Minutes form Minsk posted here on the WSO website under the European Committee.

We have basically had meetings every week in the planning committee to come up with suggestions for when and how to make the transition of knowledge. Both Tanya and Jeffrey has steep off of the EC, (Thank you ever so much) and an Interim Executive Committee of the EC will be ratified on the EC TC in September.

As previously stated there are a number of details that needs to be turned over/planned out and put in place, so there is a lot of activity going on behind the scenes.

Other than this I have been contact with The Netherlands, Polen, Norway. Slovenia is starting their translation process, Spain, Germany.

About 4 years ago we created the concept of a Service Sponsor; a sponsor that would mentor the new fellowships in setting up structure/distribution and their translation committee.

Norway and France ar formally requesting a Service Sponsor to help build up their service structures/translating committees. So training sessions in supporting those has to be planned out.

Many existing fellowships disagree/ or have internal grievances  so the seek guidance in how to handle group inventories or resolve hard issues.

Often because of language difficulties a phonecall  is easier to manage. I had 5 of these this past 4 weeks. ACA does, as far as I know; not have their own group inventory document yet another thing to develop and adopt for our fellowship.

I am ever reminded on how fast our fellowship is evolving and how big the need is for technologic solutions and written procedures. Which reminds me tha we have changed our monthly committee call to ZOOM.us for our conferences. The information can be found on the www.acawsoec.com website.

Upcoming ACA Events within the European fellowships are posted in our website.

Sometimes it takes my breath away. But I am ever so grateful to be a part of this journey.

Respectfully submitted

Majbrit M

Chair of the EC

WSO board of trustee