Committee
No. 1
Question
1:
“Would
the Fellowship share experience and make recommendations on how to
make AA more visible to the general public, particularly by
increasing awareness and understanding of how the AA programme works?
Background
1.
According to the 2010 membership survey of AA in Great Britain, 31%
of members heard of AA from an existing member. According to the AA
Census published by the GSO in Great Britain, in 1997 4.1% of AA
members reported that their point of entry into AA was media. By
2002, that number had dropped: only 1.6% of AA members listed media
as their point of entry into AA. In 2005, 5% of members indicated
that they came to AA because of radio, internet, newspaper adverts,
or tv. In 2010, 4% of members first heard of AA through radio or
newspaper (tv was not listed as a category). A further 6% listed the
internet; however the internet may not be available to as many people
as newspaper, radio or tv.
In figures
taken from the GSO website for Great Britain
(www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk), there are 34,000 AA members (from
the 2005 AA Survey). (The 2005 survey was used because he 2010 survey
online did not indicate numbers of members.) This means that 0.056,
or nearly six-hundredths of a percent, of the population of Great
Britain is a member of AA. According to the AA Fact File on the GSO
website, there are "approximately 4,400" AA groups in Great
Britain. Based on a population of 60,000,000 (source: ), that means
there is one AA group for every
13,636 people.
Given the
relatively low percentage of AA members in Great Britain (0.056
percent), the chances of a person with a drinking problem are also
relatively low. (A person only has a six-in-ten-thousand chance of
personally knowing an AA member), national-level press could be one
vital means of ensuring that the public at large is aware of the
existence of AA and that it offers a program of recovery from
alcoholism that has worked for many.
Mindful of all the good work carried out by PI at all levels of the Fellowship, all too often the media tend to focus on the problem rather than the solutions. It is the hope of this question that Conference might consider whether there might be more that can be done at the national level of AA in Great Britain to reach out to national-level press in order to increase the awareness of AA among the public as a whole.
Establishing
a committee to study this question, perhaps including outreach to
GSOs in other regions of the world to learn about what methods they
are using for press outreach and whether those have been beneficial,
might be a prudent approach to examining whether additional public
information efforts by GSO in Great Britain could be an effective
means of ensuring that there is greater public awareness of the
existence of AA in the UK.
2. Section
17, AA Service Handbook for Great Britain, ‘Public Information’.
3. “We
believe that there are opportunities for all members to participate
in PI activity,
and that
carrying the message is every member's responsibility".
(Conference 2011, Committee 4, Question 1).
Consider
the contribution to the carrying of the message, financial and
practical implications when deliberating each question."
Cheers
The Fellas
(Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
