Los Angeles, CA

In the September ’92 issue of Essay you reprinted a letter from the West L.A. Group that was not quite representative and was misleading in what we are doing. Many people read it to mean that we don’t support our intergroup. The fact is that we are the second biggest contributors in our region, even after we divide our second basket in half for our outreach program.

The West L.A. Group wishes to share with the fellowship our approach to outreach in our area. Through a series of group conscience meetings we decided to pursue maximum recovery at our Saturday night meetings and set the stage so that all possible newcomers will know that we exist as a solution. We are calling it “The Great Opportunity.” Here are the changes we instituted which are now in process: 1) We changed our Step study meeting so that every other week a Tradition is studied; 2) We instituted a First Step meeting with the goal being that a newcomer will give a written First Step to the group within a specific time frame; 3) We’ve created an “All Groups Meeting” on the last Saturday of the month when we invite different groups in our area to come and host our meeting. This is a three-speaker meeting and we get to hear people’s stories we would not ordinarily get to hear; and 4) We have instituted a “Great Opportunity” outreach program consisting of a mailer that we put together with a cover letter and SA literature, letting people in our Westside community know that we exist on a local level and that we are a resource for recovery.