The Area 47 Public Information Committee meets virtually on the third Monday of the month via the Area 47 Zoom account. No one attended the committee meeting for the past months. The next meeting will be Monday, July 19 at 6:30 p.m. Meeting ID: 889 8055 4956

Passcode: 701025.

Between now and then I hope to contact a few Area 47 D.C.M.s to ask what Public Information projects are happening in and around their districts and to answer any questions they have about Public Information. The bulk of my activity in April and May was focused on the “internal audience,” Area 47 trusted servants, and informing them about the May 22nd Delegate’s Day of Sharing. I plan to present at the NYSIW, although I will be out of town and tending to family matters. Ethan L., District 340’s P.I. Chair has agreed to cover for me if I’m unable to attend.

I met with Rochester Intergroup’s PI/CPC committee on Thursday, June 24 virtually and with District 340’s PI Committee on Monday, June 28 in person. Rochester is working on labels to place on literature that is purchased at their Service Center. The labels contain the phone number for the Rochester hotline and a QR code that links to the Rochester online meeting schedule. They’ve also made several successful connections with a local radio station and will be providing speakers for a Sunday morning talk show.

I’m continuing work on a “rack card” that District 340 will be using to share meeting schedule information. It has the phone number and website for the Syracuse Area Service Center. We realized that the printed schedules we used to provide with pamphlet packets to hospitals and doctors offices etc., were obsolete almost as soon as they were printed. The rack card is colorful and has the blue Meeting Guide logo on it as well as a QR code that leads to aa.org. It’s designed to fit in standard AA literature racks. We plan to share the template with Rochester Intergroup so they can customize it with their own contact information. If they decide to use it and it works for them, we’ll make the template (MSWord most likely) available here on the Area 47 website for others to use. It should be pretty affordable to have printed locally or online and solves the problem of distributing out-of-date meeting information.

At Monday’s District 340 P.I. meeting, we reviewed pamphlets for inclusion in the college project that Ethan L. D340 PI Chair, is working on. We compared the “Is AA for Me” to “Is AA for You” and decided the “…Me” was better for his audience. He’s still working on distribution plans, but the other two pieces we determined most appropriate were “Young People and AA” and “AA for Alcoholics with Mental Health Issues.” One or more of the pamphlets plus the rack card will be distributed to local college campuses, most likely through health and/or counseling offices.

In Service,

Colleen K.

Area 47 Public Information Committee Chair