Hello,

As you know, last month we posted the approval draft of A Spiritual Principle a Day on www.na.org/conference and made paper copies available for purchase from our webstore (www.na.org/webstore); search for item #9146.

Unfortunately, in our haste to get the draft posted and printed, we inadvertently left a chunk of entries (from compassion to empathy) out of the table of spiritual principles that appears at the end of the draft. Thankfully, this was corrected in the Approval Draft dated December 2021 on the cover. We have posted a corrected version of the SPAD draft on the conference page, www.na.org/conference, and posted the table as a separate PDF for those who have printed or purchased the draft already. Our inventory of the draft for sale has been updated and corrected as well. We apologize for any inconvenience.

While you’re at the webstore, you may want to check out the Exciting Deals from the Catalog dropdown menu. You might find some holiday gifts there.

Thank you to everyone who attended the 4 December webinar on sponsorship. We have posted an audio recording of the event in the Webinars and Events section of the virtual meetings Page: www.na.org/virtual. We should have a summary report posted soon as well.

In service,

Your World Board

Hello,

Exciting news! The Interim Conference Agenda Report (CAR) / Conference Approval Track (CAT), ICC for short, has been posted for download. The ICC includes the approval draft of A Spiritual Principle a Day (SPAD). More information is below.

The ICC is posted on the conference page:www.na.org/conference. The SPAD draft is posted as a separate PDF. We have not been mailing paper copies of reports since the onset of the pandemic, and in line with that practice, we will not be mailing paper copies of the ICC, nor will they be for sale from the webstore. Paper copies of SPAD, however, are available for $10, plus shipping and handling from our webstore (item #9146): www.na.org/webstore.

The WSC itself will be a partial virtual interim conference, taking place online 22, 23, 29, 30 April 2022. For more information, read the introductory essay in the ICC.

When all of the business is completed at the conference—the motions in the ICC are dispensed with—we will hold small-group discussions with participants about the future of the WSC. To provide input for those discussions, we have posted a survey with brainstorming questions at www.na.org/survey. The PDF posted on that page lists all of the questions on the survey and includes some helpful background material. If you have ideas about the conference and how to improve it, let us know by filling out a survey. It will be posted through January 2022: www.na.org/survey.  

Sponsorship Day

Also, don’t forget about the sponsorship webinar, Saturday 4 December, 11am-1pm, Pacific Standard Time.

Meeting ID: 816 9027 7423 Passcode: 1953

In service,

Your World Board

Hello,

We have two announcements for you today:

• We are holding a Sponsorship Day Webinar 4 December
• We just implemented text-to-give capability

Sponsorship Day

Sponsorship Day is 1 December. To celebrate, we are planning a webinar the following Saturday 4 December, 11am-1pm, Pacific Standard Time. We’ve asked members from around the world to share about their experiences, including the joys of sponsorship, long-distance sponsorship, looking for a sponsor after yours has passed, and even one NA region sponsoring another.

Meeting ID: 816 9027 7423 Passcode: 1953

Also, we have two new gift bundles that include the sponsorship medallion. Combine the medallion with a keychain to hold it for $10 (item #9603B in our webstore,) or you can purchase both the keychain and medallion with a page-a-day calendar for $25 (item #9500B in our webstore). You can also purchase the sponsorship medallion or calendar individually (item #9603 and item #9500  respectively). To order any of the items, click on the links in the item numbers or enter the item number in the search bar of our webstore: www.na.org/webstore.

Text-to-Give

We have a new way to contribute to World Services. If you text the word VISION to the number 801801, you will get a link that takes you right to our contribution page www.na.org/give. We’re trying this new method because it may be more convenient for members in meetings on mobile devices and it’s easy to announce in meetings and events.

We have posted a slide about text-to-give for meetings and events in the on-screen resources section of the virtual meetings page: www.na.org/virtual 

We will be emailing again this month when we have posted the Interim Conference Agenda Report / Conference Approval Track material.

In service,

World Board 

Hello,

We are writing with heavy hearts today. After much discussion, we have decided that we must cancel the 38th World Convention, which had originally been scheduled to be held in Melbourne, Australia in September 2021 and then tentatively rescheduled for November 2022. Given the deadline of 31 October to cancel the contract with Melbourne CVB with no financial penalties, this seemed like the most responsible decision we could make, after evaluating the overall priorities for the use of NAWS’ resources in the next two years and the unknown impact of the global health crisis including potential travel restrictions. Admittedly, it is not the decision we wanted to make, however, we simply don’t have the ability to have a proper World Convention, one in which our global membership can attend and have a World Convention experience. We believe our most conscientious path is to cancel. 

COVID has flipped our entire world upside down, and WCNA-38 has been no exception. We were hoping beyond hope that we could make it happen but that is not the case. NAWS’ financial and human resources continue to be strained. We are slowly building back thanks to the help of member contributions, but that progress is gradual and not always predictable.

The board has decided to explore whether it is possible to insert a World Convention into the existing WCNA rotation or to change the rotation cycle somehow so that it will not be as long a wait to bring WCNA back to the Asia, Middle East, and Africa World Convention zone. Any change of this kind would obviously need World Service Conference approval.

We understand the sorrow about this decision, and we wish this was the hardest news we had to share today, but as we were grappling with this decision and drafting our reporting about it, we lost a titan. Ron B, resident of Melbourne and former World Board chair, has left us. Ron was a gift to NA and to all who knew him. He was a man of great wit, diplomacy, and kindness. He had a passion for NA recovery and service, and he gave of himself for decades, including twelve years on the World Board. We are all diminished by his loss. Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to his family, sponsees, and friends.

World Board 

Hello,

This email includes news about

• Hardcover Basic Text back in stock
• Interim CAR/CAT coming out in November
• SPAD approval draft
• Sponsorship Day
• IP paper colors
• LWB deadline

Hardcover Basic Text back in stock

Happy news: the hardcover Basic Text is back in stock in our Chatsworth office. Hardcover Basic Texts are still on backorder in our European office, but we hope to have stock replenished there soon as well. As we reported in our last email, we are doing our best to adapt to disruptions in the supply chain. Thank you all for your patience. You can order paper copies of the Basic Text and all of our literature from our webstore: www.na.org/webstore, and electronic copies of our books from the links here: www.na.org/elit.  

Interim Conference Agenda Report/ Conference Approval Track Material.

Conference reporting will be different this year than ever before. All of the decisions for the 2022 virtual interim meeting of the World Service Conference will be in one document: the interim CAR / CAT (ICC) that will be posted on the conference page (www.na.org/conference) by the CAR publication date of 24 November 2021. The ICC will not be available for sale from the webstore and we will not be doing a paper mailing of the document.

The items for decision at the 2022 meeting include the 2022-2023 budget, an extension of the existing moratorium of the FIPT inspection clause, adjustment of terms for WSC trusted servants, and the Spiritual Principle a Day book draft.

SPAD

The approval draft of the Spiritual Principle a Day book will be an appendix in the posted Interim CAR/CAT. We will also be offering bound copies in our webstore (www.na.org/webstore) for $10 plus shipping and handling.

Sponsorship Day

Sponsorship Day is 1 December, and in anticipation, we have added ecards for sponsors and sponsees to the “Send Some Love” options at www.na.org/contribute. We also have Sponsorship medallions available for $5 https://cart-us.na.org/search?q=9603

IP Paper Colors

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are no longer able to obtain paper in all of the colors we usually utilize. As a result, we will have to change the paper color of IP #7 and IP #23. So if you see a new looking pamphlet on the literature rack at your meeting, it may just be a new look for an existing IP, and this is why.

Sixtieth Anniversary Little White Book Input Deadline

We’ll close with a final reminder about the proposed sixtieth anniversary special edition Little White Book. You can read about it in the June 2021 Notice for LWB posted on the FIPT page: www.na.org/fipt. If you have any input on the idea please send it to wb@na.org by the end of October.

Keep coming back, everyone!

If you have any questions about these topics or anything else, reach out and ask: worldboard@na.org. We welcome your input and ideas.

Yours in service,

World Board

Hello,

Ordinarily we would not send a NAWS Update email so soon after our last one, but these are not ordinary times.

We are writing to let you know we are temporarily out of stock of hardcover English-language Basic Texts, as well as some other items, in our Chatsworth and European branches. Currently our office in Canada still has hardcover Basic Texts in stock. We typically try to keep an inventory level of well over $1,000,000 in Chatsworth, and that high level of inventory has, until now, insulated us against many of the supply chain issues that have been affecting organizations and businesses worldwide, but now those challenges have caught up with us. We will not be able to accept orders for the English-language hardcover Basic Text until 15 October.

As of this writing, we still have soft cover Basic Texts in stock in all branches, and don’t forget that you can stream or download audio of the Fifth Edition Basic Text in English for free at www.na.org/audio. (You’ll find Arabic, Hebrew, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, and Thai BTs there as well.)

We are doing our best to mitigate the effects of circumstances beyond our control ranging from challenges sourcing raw materials to delays in shipping and in unloading shipments at ports. Nonetheless, these circumstances may affect stock of other items as well. We apologize for the shortages and appreciate your patience.  

Yours in service,

World Board

Hello,

This email includes news about 

• Virtual Meetings Best Practices
• Plans for WSC 2022/2023
• 60th Anniversary Little White Book
• Spiritual Principle a Day approval draft
• Addressing Predatory, Disruptive, or Violent Behavior
• Website Shortcuts

Virtual Meetings

We have posted a draft of a new piece of service material, Virtual Meetings Best Practices: www.na.org/toolbox. NA members around the world have helped to create this piece by sharing locally developed resources and by participating in the web meetings we have been hosting for the last two years. The new draft tool covers a range of topics, including keeping meetings secure from disruption, welcoming newcomers, and practicing the Seventh Tradition.

We encourage you to review the draft posted on the Toolbox project page www.na.org/toolbox, where you will also find a short survey to gather input until 30 November. You are welcome to complete the survey as an individual member or with others in a group or service event setting.

Thank you to everyone who has helped with the project so far. We look forward to publishing this new, much-needed, piece of service material soon.

WSC Plans

Conference participants have decided to adopt the World Board’s recommendation that the World Service Conference be pushed to 2023, in the hopes that we will be able to gather safely in person then. In the meantime, there will be an interim, virtual WSC meeting in 2022 to make the decisions necessitated by law or policy as well as decide on the Spiritual Principle a Day book..

We intend to publish an interim combined CAR/CAT (Conference Agenda Report/Conference Approval Track) document by the upcoming CAR publication date, which is 24 November in English, 24 December for the translated versions. We also will post an updated version of A Guide to World Services in NA soon that includes the new deadlines and recent related decisions by Conference participants.

The two recommendation reports from the board posted on www.na.org/conference contain more information.

Little White Book Input Deadline

Don’t forget: the deadline to give input on the 60th anniversary Little White Book (LWB) being proposed is coming up. As a reminder, we would like to publish a version of the LWB that includes the stories from all of the different language versions.

A Guide to World Services in NA explains that, “If a local NA community with a history of successful translation efforts wishes to develop local stories, they may do so for the Little White Book.” In line with this policy, 13 language versions of the LWB include local stories. We would like to combine English translations of all of these stories, together with the eight stories in the English LWB, under one cover. The Fellowship Intellectual Property Trust allows the World Board to bundle and repackage already published NA literature providing 120-day notice is given to the Fellowship. We posted that notice in June, and the deadline for input is 31 October. For more information see the June 2021 Notice for LWB posted at www.na.org/fipt.

SPAD

We are finalizing the approval draft of the Spiritual Principle a Day Book. It will be published electronically as an appendix to the English 2022 Interim CAR/CAT, and we intend to make bound copies available for $10 plus shipping and handling from www.na.org/webstore. When the draft is available for purchase, we will email members to let everyone know.

Addressing Predatory, Disruptive, or Violent Behavior

Our most recent open webinar was focused on creating a safe and welcoming atmosphere in NA. We will post a report and audio recording from that webinar to www.na.org/virtual soon. In the meantime, we have collected policies, workshop outlines, statements, and other tools related to the topic and posted them on our local service resources page: www.na.org/localresources. If you have any locally developed resources on the subject, please send them to worldboard@na.org so that we can post them.

Website Shortcuts

Did you know that many of our webpages have shortcut addresses that are easy to memorize? Several of them are listed in this email, and in previous NAWS Update emails posted at www.na.org/nawsnews. You can find a complete list of website shortcuts posted at the bottom of www.na.org/aboutus. 

If you have any questions about these topics or anything else, reach out and ask: worldboard@na.org. We welcome your input and ideas.

Yours in service,

World Board

RSC will be completely virtual see calendar for link.

Hello,

This email covers the following topics.

• 4 September Webinar: Creating a Safe and Welcoming Atmosphere in NA
• 2020 Annual Report
• New Instagram @naglobalevents
• Survey of Important Dates in NA
• Little White Book 120-Day Notice
• SPAD Review and Input
• New Sponsorship Medallion
• Invest in Our Vision

Scroll down for more information on each.

Unity Day Webinar

To celebrate Unity Day, we are holding a webinar open to any interested member, Saturday 4 September, 11am-1pm, Pacific Daylight Time. Ten members from around the world will share how their groups and service bodies are helping to create a safe and welcoming atmosphere in NA.

You can join through the Zoom meeting number 848 7902 0276, password 1953, where we will have interpretation in Portuguese and Spanish. If you require translation into another language and you have an interpreter, let us know: wb@na.org. We will also livestream the webinar in English only. The streaming link will be posted on the webinar page shortly before the meeting begins: www.na.org/webinar. You can also find flyers in 8 languages posted on that page.

2020 Annual Report

The 2020 NAWS Annual Report has been posted: www.na.org/ar. Even if you have never looked at one of our annual reports, you’ll want to check out this one. For the first time, we are publishing the report digitally. There is also a PDF version for those who prefer to download a document. The Annual Report is the best place to get a full picture of our finances over the course of the fiscal year. This report covers the period 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020. Because of the complexity of our organization, with branches in five countries with different currencies and the time required for an external audit, it always takes many months for us to produce an annual report. This time the report is coming out later than usual, primarily because of our continuing staffing shortages. Thank you for your patience. We hope you enjoy the new format.

New Instagram Account for Events

To celebrate reaching more than 10,000 followers on @narcoticsanonymous, we started a new Instagram account @naglobalevents dedicated exclusively to area, regional, zonal, and world events. Send flyers to naglobalevents@na.org and we will post them on Insta and our webpage www.na.org/events.

We can feature event flyers as main posts on @naglobalevents, not just as stories and highlights, as we did on @narcoticsanonymous. For now, we will post events on both accounts, but when @naglobalevents has more followers, we plan to just use that account for event listings. Having an account dedicated to events will free up the stories and highlights on @narcoticsanonymous for clickable items such as new inventory items, new material on the virtual meetings page, audio Basic Texts, and so on. At more than 10,000 followers, we can now include live links on stories and highlights.

Follow our main account @narcoticsanonymous for news and announcements from World Services and @naglobalevents for flyers from around the world.  

Calendar Survey

We have a survey posted through the end of August to gather important dates in NA: www.na.org/survey. Our goal is to create a monthly calendar of significant dates. You can help by sharing important dates, such as when NA started in your community, when the first convention or service body meeting occurred, or other milestones you think would be significant to NA as a whole.

We are looking for area-, regional-, and zonal-level dates. Please limit group anniversaries to the first NA meeting in your community. Given how large NA is—in more than 140 countries!—we won’t be able to include every date, but we appreciate everyone who fills out the survey.

Little White Book 120-Day Notice

This year marks 60 years since the Little White Book (LWB) as we know it (with the Traditions included) was published. We want to remind you that we plan to publish a commemorative LWB that includes the stories from all of the language versions. Thirteen of the 30 translated White Booklets contain local personal stories. We intend to publish a Little White Book with the English translations of all of these stories plus the stories in the English-language LWB, 85 stories in all. We would add a brief description before the title page explaining what this special edition contains and would publish this anniversary edition in English by the end of 2021.

This type of bundling and repackaging of already published literature is permitted through the Fellowship Intellectual Property Trust (FIPT) with 120-day notice to the Trustor. The Trustor of the FIPT is “the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, as given voice by its groups through their regional delegates at the World Service Conference.”

We initially emailed in June to announce our intentions. For more information, see the June 2021 Notice for LWB posted at www.na.org/fipt. Any comments can be sent to wb@na.org  by 31 October 2021.

SPAD

It’s not too late to contribute to the Spiritual Principle a Day book project. The last batch of entries is posted for review and input through 13 September: www.na.org/spad.

This batch contains 88 entries on 38 spiritual principles, including attentiveness, autonomy, caring, communication, conscience, consistency, cooperation, curiosity, encouragement, equality, equanimity, fidelity, generosity, honesty, honor, humility, independence, individuality, interdependence, joy, listening, participation, passion, powerlessness, purpose, reliability, restraint, safety, selflessness, serenity, simplicity, sincerity, solidarity, steadfastness, thoughtfulness, trust, wonder, and breakfast(!)

Give input on as many or as few as you like.

New Sponsorship Medallions

We have a new sponsorship medallion available at www.na.org/webstore. Search for item #9603 or for “Sponsorship Medallion.” This full-color medallion with the Group Logo fits easily inside a card envelope, and is a simple way to say thank you. Don’t forget, Sponsorship Day is 1 December.

Invest in Our Vision

Our Seventh Tradition essay in the Basic Text says, “We all have to pull together, and in pulling together we learn that we are really part of something greater than ourselves.” We hope you’ll consider a monthly financial contribution to World Services if you haven’t already set one up: www.na.org/contribute

Thank you to everyone who contributes to NA, whether financially, through service, or sponsorship.

Yours in service,

World Board

Calendar Survey

We are putting together a monthly calendar of significant dates in NA, and are asking for your help. We already have many world service-related dates, but we would like to include other dates, such as when NA started in different places around the world, when the first convention or service body meeting occurred in your community, or any other milestones you think would be significant to NA as a whole. Please fill out the survey www.na.org/survey with significant dates by the end of August. 

We are looking for area-, regional-, and zonal-level dates. Please limit group anniversaries to the first NA meeting in your community. Given how large NA is—we’re in more than 140 countries now!—we won’t be able to include every date, but we appreciate everyone who fills out the survey.

Send a Virtual Hug

In response to requests from members, you can now contribute in memory of someone, for someone’s NA anniversary, or even just to send a virtual hug. If you click the Send Some Love option on www.na.org/contribute, after you make your contribution and indicate the occasion and recipient, you will be taken to a page where you can select a card to send to let someone know you have contributed in honor of them or their loved one.

The cards are made possible because we are switching our payment processor to Donorbox

Switch to Donorbox

If you make a recurring monthly contribution to NA World Services, you may have already received an email letting you know we are switching to a new payment processor for recurring contributions. If you don’t yet have a recurring contribution set up, you can do so easily through the Quick Contributions button at www.na.org/contribute.

The processing on our end will be easier with Donorbox, and in addition to the new cards, there are a number of advantages for contributors:

• You can contribute in multiple currencies easily.
• You can use your checking account or a credit card or PayPal to contribute, and you have a range of options for recurring contributions: monthly, quarterly, and annually.
• You can pause or change the amount of your contribution at any time.
• You can opt to receive an annual report of your contributions to use in your taxes or budgeting.
• You can choose whether to pay the transaction fees or opt to have NAWS pay them.

We will keep both payment processors for now, but by the end of the calendar year, we hope to be using Donorbox to process all recurring contributions.

Thank you to everyone who contributes to NA, whether financially, through service, or sponsorship.

Together we can!

Yours in service,

World Board