The lockdown paradoxically brought our neighboring regions of Europe & the Middle East and the German-Speaking Region together in new ways.

On March 21 and 22, we held our first online Interregional Convention via Zoom entitled “Our Common Welfare.” In the process, we discovered that we could reach our non-English, non-German speaking members as well by offering live consecutive interpretation of the convention into 11 additional languages.

The result was a breakthrough event that has our regions still talking about the electrifying effect that it has had in unifying our members.

Our regions had been sensing a growing spiritual hunger in the last five years to gain from one another’s experience, strength and hope. Initially, we were visiting each other’s regional events, and this whetted our appetites to increase cross-regional connections and to overcome linguistic and cultural differences.

We then had thoughts about co-hosting small cross-regional face-to-face events, but the pandemic halted those plans. But at the same time it opened the door to the idea of an online convention that first arose in May 2020. EMER´s Good Neighbours Committee and the equivalent Committee from the German-Speaking Region drove the process, supported by four joint subcommittees: Publicity, Interpretation, Speakers & Program and Technology.

We based our interpretation plans on the SIM’s use of Zoom interpretation channels and extended them to cover the 12 languages into which we wanted to offer interpretation.

The subcommittee for the program and speakers went in search of new faces—people with at least five years sobriety who were not yet well known on the speaker circuit. This opened the door to many new contacts and these new speakers were completely willing to contribute to the event. One speaker started her talk with “I agreed to this service because I recently heard ‘Whenever SA asks you to speak, then you speak!’”

In between speaker sessions, the event organized breakout meeting times to give participants a chance to meet directly and more informally, to make deeper personal connections. In one such room, members could continue discussions from the meeting before; in another, one-on-one discussions could be conducted to share more openly.

The EMER Correctional Facilities Committee also made a presentation about CFC work to those interested in starting such service or joining EMER’s work. Our experiment with breakout rooms showed us that they can be used not only to socialize but also to learn about SA service in each other’s regions. Without the strong support of so many people around the world we would have never been able to put on this event. Thank You God for this beautiful happening.

Facts and Figures on “Our Common Welfare”

It was a veritable beehive of service on March 20-21. All in all, 67 people from EMER and the German-Speaking Region were busy as panelists (16), interpreters (37), moderators (4) and members of the Organizational Committee (10).

Consecutive interpretation was provided into 12 languages: German, English, Arabic, Dutch, French, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian and Spanish! We had 423 registered participants from six continents.

Panelists shared their experience, strength and hope on the following topics:

• Not Feeling Different from Others Anymore
• Living Without Secrets
• Unity While Honoring All Voices
• Working with Others

Participants had the opportunity to ask questions in their native language as the interpreters then translated each question into the other languages.

After each session, breakout rooms were open and participants could choose freely among “continuation” rooms on the session topics, or Fellowship rooms, or individual one-on-one meetings, or an information meeting hosted by the EMER Correctional Facilities Committee describing outreach to sexaholic inmates. Various national rooms also formed spontaneously in their respective languages.

In all of these sub-rooms, you could feel the vibrant atmosphere of fellowship and optimism among the participants.

Having learned much along the way in handling the technical and administrative sides of this complex event, the Organizational Committee would be glad to share its experience, strength and hope with any SA member who would like to explore setting up an event like this.

We thank all the servers and collaborators who made this idea become reality!