We are the Message - If you can understand us!

Imagine Rosanne, one of our co-founders, was born and raised in Greece and our first meeting was in Athens? Imagine that OA World Service Office was in Alexandroupolis and all WSO communications was in Greek and not in English? You write to WSO and, in reply you get:

Greek Preamble
Did you know this is the OA Preamble, in Greek? How do we fulfill our primary purpose when our fellow suffer can’t even read our message? This was the fundamental point of this evening workshop. We’re a worldwide fellowship with meetings and service bodies worldwide and we need to expand our support outside the English speaking world. So, for me, the key points were:
  1. We are a worldwide fellowship which means to be accessible, we need to available in many languages.
  2. Our World Service Office needs to be able to be responsive in languages other than English.
  3. It takes money to do this.

It was this forum which lead, ultimately, to the BOT allocating $20,000 dollars toward translation. To be frank, I don’t know exactly what that 20K is allocated toward. I’ll find out. I feel this effort at becoming responsive to the compulsive overeater who still suffers in their language of choice, will yield positive results for our fellowship and the COE who are still in the disease.

Steve

P.S. The Greek above is a translation from a free on-line service. It’s quality is questionable.  At this workshop, we found just such a translation in front of us. The Greek idea is not mine. It’s from the workshop. I did embellish a bit, as is my wont.

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