The Formation of Australian Virtual Area A

BACKGROUND
According to the Australian General Service Board’s Membership Survey, during the COVID lockdown, 88% of Australian AAs attended virtual (online, phone, etc) meetings in place of their regular in- person meetings. When the country opened back up, the number attending virtual meetings exclusively, dropped to 7%. However nearly half of respondents continued to attend virtual meetings at the same time as going back to in-person meetings. It was reported In the December 2022 Edition of AA Around Australia that “clearly virtual meetings are here to stay, and we need to encourage those using virtual meetings to participate in our service structure”. 

AA AUSTRALIA ANSWERS THE CALL
The clear opportunity to encourage this new cohort of Australian AAs active online to engage in general service was there. However, the AAs attending these new meetings as home group members were commonly from different parts of the country (or globe). Hence virtual AA meetings weren’t necessarily associated with a particular location, and the general service structure in its pre-COVID form (with local Groups aligned to geographical Areas) wasn’t able to accommodate. Recognising this, Australian AAs called on Conference to make changes, and the following topic was submitted for consideration: 

Topic #009/2020 

Some virtual meetings will continue after the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. These meetings will not necessarily be associated with AA meetings that are also held in a physical location and the groups that run them are likely to be made up of members from diverse physical locations. As such, they will not be located in a physical AA Area or Region. Creation of a virtual Area/Region would enable such groups to participate in the structure of AA by electing GSR’s, running virtual Assemblies and electing a Delegate to the General Service Conference. The existing process for requesting creation of a new Area (AA Service Manual pp.53-54) cannot assist in this situation, because it assumes a request from an existing Area which is no longer able to provide adequate service and communication to all the groups that are within its geographical area. 

Conference agreed and formulated the following: 

Advisory Action #009/2020 

Conference resolved that the creation of a virtual Area be included as part of the review of the General Service Structure by the Conference Policies & Admissions Committee. All Conference members are requested to advise of any concerns so they can be addressed in a guideline for creating a virtual Area. A draft of this guideline will be circulated to Conference members for input, following which a mail poll will be conducted for approval of the guideline prior to Conference next year. 

The review was conducted, concerns heard, and a draft guideline compiled by Working Group B of the Conference Policies & Admissions Committee was circulated and approved by 2021 Conference members. Accordingly, ‘ Guideline No. GL- 39: AA Guideline for Virtual Area’ was created, which stipulates two possible avenues for the formation of virtual Areas. Namely: 

Option 1 

If the proposed Area wishes to become part of an existing region, they should submit attached Form A [which is] a slightly amended version of the form used by physical Areas. 

Option 2 

Should the proposed Area wish to stand alone and not be part of an existing region, they should submit the attached form B to the Conference Policies & Admissions Committee. Such an Area would come under the auspices of the Trustees’ Remote Communities committee, with the Chair of this committee being available for consultation, etc. 

VIRTUAL AREA SUB-COMMITTEE
This was the catalyst for a small group of three AAs from the On Awakening Group to meet in early 2022. They discussed the potential for forming a virtual Area to enable members of virtual meetings to (a) vote/participate in AA Australia’s General Service structure, (b) financially contribute to AA Australia, and (c) receive information from AA Australia’s General Service Office and General Service Board. As an initial set of actions, these three Australian AAs decided the way forward would be to contact: 

1. the General Service Office and General Service Board to find out if any other Groups were planning to form a virtual Area.
    
2. the Australian Online Inter Group to see what structure they currently had in place.
    
3. other Australian virtual Groups to find out their current level of participation in the General Service structure, and notify them of the intend to submit an application to create a Virtual
   Area. 

This group, that would come to be known as the Virtual Area Sub-committee, would meet a total of seven times between February and June 2022 and be constituted by representatives from fourteen separate virtual Groups. Ultimately, members of this sub-committee envisaged that a standalone virtual Area would be better able to fulfil the vision of Topic #009/2020, and on June 14 2022, their activities would culminate in an application to the Conference Policies & Admissions Committee to form a virtual Area under the ‘auspices of the Trustees’ Remote Communities committee’. 

THE APPLICATION
The Conference Policies & Admissions Committee met and considered the application, and subsequently, on August 1, a communication from the General Service Office Manager called on members of the 2022 Conference to vote on the following: 

The Conference Policies & Admissions Committee have reviewed the application to form a virtual Area, which will be supported by the Regional Trustee Chair of the Trustees’ Remote Communities Committee, and recommends to Conference that the new Area be accepted and identified as Virtual Area A. 

The 26 Conference members voted in favour of the recommendation by a large majority. And after a reasonable period to allow for the minority voice to be heard, the application was ratified. On August 29, 2022, the sub-committee was notified that their application had been accepted by the General Service Conference, and an elected Delegate of the new Area would be assigned to Conference Committees for that year. 

VIRTUAL AREA A UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE TRUSTEES’ REMOTE COMMUNITIES COMMITTEE
In anticipation of the application being successful and recognising that the 2022 General Service Conference was less than three months away, the inaugural Election Assembly of this virtual Area was scheduled for August 16th. From this meeting, the virtual Area’s first committee, comprising the new Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, Delegate and Alternate delegate was elected. This new Assembly of the virtual Area would meet a further four times prior to sending their Delegate to Conference. After the 2022 Conference, assemblies of the new virtual Area moved to a more traditional quarterly frequency. 

AMENDING GUIDELINE 39
As the non-geographical nature of virtual service is largely unprecedented, the challenge of how to align new initiatives like a virtual Area with the established service structure is ongoing. GL-39 was created considering the suggestions outlined in Topic #009/2020. But the problem of ensuring GSRs of virtual Groups were able to fulfill the requirements of the role hadn’t been resolved adequately. Acknowledging that Australian virtual Groups often have members from across the globe, the 2023 Conference Policy and Admissions committee submitted Topic 31/2023 for consideration by Conference, recommending that GL-39 be amended to explicitly state that virtual Group GSRs reside in Australia, ensuring that they are “in a position to become a member of the Area Committee, which requires them to be a legal resident, and/or become the elected Area Delegate or Alternate Delegate, which requires them to attend the general service conference in Australia”. 

This suggestion was endorsed by Conference and notably, in GL-39 the passage: 

All Area Committee members should be Australian citizens or have Permanent Residency Status... 

was replaced with: 

All Area Committee members should live in Australia for the duration of their term of service. When electing an online group service representative (GSR) or an online Area Committee, members/groups are encouraged to consider the suggested qualifications as per Section 3 of the Service Manual. 

The GSR is generally the group’s mail contact for the Australian General Service Office and usually assists with the planning of and/or attends regional forums and conventions in the Area. The GSR may be in line for election later as a DCM, Area Officer or Area Delegate. It is suggested you consider carefully whether your candidates are qualified in terms of experience and availability for the role... Online-only groups belonging to, or considering joining, a virtual Area, should be hosted in Australia and their GSRs should ideally live in Australia. 

MOVING FORWARD 

Concept 1 states that ‘the final responsibility and the ultimate authority for AA world (general) services should always reside in the collective conscience of the Fellowship’. This collective conscience is carried by GSRs to District and Area level. The recognition of this is implicit in the call to action of Topic #009/2020: to mobilise the collective conscience of this new cohort of virtual AAs and engage them in the general service structure. 

At the inaugural Assembly of the virtual Area, six GSRs were in attendance. This number has grown steadily; however, it remains the priority of Australian Virtual Area A to connect with the growing number of virtual Groups and encourage them to elect GSRs and participate in general service. This imperative is the guiding framework for decisions made and actions taken at virtual Area level. 

November 2023