May 2017 Area News
These items are from the May 2017 Northern New England Regional Minutes and may be shorter than the original reports
Champlain Valley
Champlain Valley Area Service Committee of NA next meets on May 28th, 2017 at 1:45 pm at
the Turning Point Center, 489 North Main Street, Barre, VT. 05641.
CVA members are pleased to note the outstanding progress on the Regional Web Site and are already seeing the advantages this is bringing to recovering addicts beginning to be realized. Gratitude is sent out to all who worked to make this now operational web site a reality. Our CVA Convention is continuing to move forward with carefully developing plans for our November 10th through November 12th, 2017 annual convention at the Sheraton Hotel in Burlington, VT. CVANAXXVII–A New Way To Live is certain to be another well supported and exciting series of offerings and goings on and we hope that you are planning to attend, whether for the first time or if this has become an annual event in your lives.
Our Hospitals and Institutions Committee continues to provide reliable, high quality weekly NA service panels at two of the four correctional facilities in the Champlain Valley Area. Plans are now underway for us to also begin services to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility (mostly serving women) in the very near future. We are grateful to our Areas members, groups and service committee for recent approval of our 2017 budget for H&I of $1000. A sizeable literature order will be placed this coming week in support of H&I.
Our Activities Committee is energetic and enthusiastic, with several movie nights, a bowling event and a visit to the Pigs in Space event in Connecticut recently. Our next event can be seen on the new Regional web site nnerna.org, or on our Area web site cvana.org. It is called Grill and Games and will take place in our capital city of Montpelier’s Hubbard Park on June 10th, 2017 from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. Please bring a dish if possible.
Due to a shortage of trusted servants we are seeing an increasing trend towards members of the Area Service Committee needing to assume two or even more than two service positions at the Area level. People with suggestions as to how to address this situation are encouraged to offer them to us on our web site, while CVA members are encouraged very much to please come forward to alleviate some of the work load.
We currently have open positions for Area Treasurer, Area Secretary, and RCM-Alternate. We also are very much in need of additional member support on the H&I subcommittee.
Eastern Maine
All is well in Eastern Maine. At the area level, we’ve started to slowly revamp our policy and guidelines to meet our area’s needs. When we started, our policy was just cobbled together from other area/region’s. We’ve also included a line stating that any amendment cannot be modified again for six months. Members have expressed concern as to lack of activities. At this time, all activities have been generated at the group level. We have one new group started in a new geographic area where there isn’t any meetings. We were contacted by the Greater NY Region about ordering literature from them and wondered if anyone had any information. FYI: I spoke to a former World Board member about this. As of a year ago, NAWS didn’t have an opinion on RSO literature sales. Historically, the offices were started to facilitate literature distribute (say, 20 years ago.) There have been problems in the past with their stability where NAWS had to step in a fulfill literature orders. She doesn’t know if this is a current problem. Large enough orders direct from NAWS are eligible for a volume product discount, so we should see a reduced price in the literature itself. She recommended prior to ordering from them, to contact them to verify what their discount level is and other money things. She also recommended contacting Steve at World to get more information about their current stability.
H&I continues to be strong. We have two standing commitments and in the process of starting a new monthly commitment. H&I also just fully revamped its policy, in large part to add structure to the roles of panel member and panel leader, including requirements as to how many subcommittee meetings must be attended. We’ve talked about getting an H&I meeting into a Veteran’s Home and wanted to get region feedback since it’s not a closed facility. PR hasn’t really held a subcommittee meeting in a few months, but continues to hold a flier hanging day monthly in different locations throughout the area.
Seacoast Area
Very little to report from Seacoast. Our campout committee is working very hard on this year’s event (new venue) and we have been encouraged to push early registration due to the new venue needed all the “rent” up front unlike the other place where they took a deposit and waited until after to be paid. Seacoast has no donation.
Granite State Area
Absent, no report
Maine Area
Maine area has been quite busy as of late. Due to an astoundingly low amount of group participation at the area level there has been some financial restructuring and fund conservation. Foremost there has been an attempt to transition to a digital phone service. We have also begun to address some inefficiency around our meeting list production. Our meeting list coordinator has informed us that we print too many, too often, on a non standard paper size. We started determining what options between all those variables will allow us to continue to serve our area effectively and efficiently. Lastly at our second to last ASC our treasurer made a series of motions to assure that our area will continue to be solvent. We have increased our prudent reserve to $2000, created a set aside account to prevent negative cash flow, changed our donation dates to align with the fiscal quarters, and consolidated our conventions into one event. On the subject of effective service, Maine area has elected several new trusted servants. After asking our H&I chair to step down due to responsibilities not being met, Ben L. has been elected as an interim chair. Kenzie C. has been elected as outreach chair, and after several months without one, Liz D. has been elected as secretary. We also have a number of events coming up. IDT Social Media and Our Spiritual Principles and speaker jam on July 15th 12-6 at Mercy Hospital in Portland, Sisters in The Sun Women’s Retreat from July 14th-16th at the in Alfred, Maine and last Live The Program, Live The Miracle speaker jam on June 11th in Biddeford, Maine (Proceeds will fund MASCNA Convention)