World Service Convention

OA’s board of trustees has issued what it calls a significant new policy regarding whether meetings should allow minors to attend face to face, online, telephone, or non-real-time meetings. As you know, OA is a bottom-up organization, and no trusted servants govern OA, so this question remains with each local meeting. The board said, “the…

R6 Chair Kimberly C asked on Friday for the conference to reconsider its decision of Thursday to consider major religious holidays in the scheduling of future conferences. Her rationale was that nonreligious people could feel as though they had been relegated to lesser status. Indeed, the second pro speaker said as much, quite emotionally. She…

“Abstinence is the action of refraining from compulsive eater and compulsive food behaviors while working toward or maintaining a healthy body weight.” Surely you’ve heard this before; it’s OA’s definition of abstinence. At the World Service Business Conference in Albuquerque, a delegate proposed removing the word “weight.” Plenty of delegates rose to speak for and…

A proposal submitted by the National Service Board of Greece asked that no conferences be scheduled three days before or three days after major religious holidays. Their recent experience was that the start of the conference overlapped Easter Monday for those following the Christian Orthodox religion, and they need more time to get here than…

Lifeline: Stories of Recovery is seeking submissions — in writing, as an illustration, or in video —on the topic of staying abstinent through the holidays. Here are some proposed ideas, offered in OA’s announcement: Stories will be published Dec. 1, but your creative work must be submitted by Oct. 31. Use this form to send yours…

Overeaters Anonymous wants to hear your stories about abstinence, to be published on the Lifeline blog, and possibly in a book compiling the best submissions. Deadline to tell your stories this way is end of year.