- The views and opinions expressed
during this podcast are those of our guests.
No one person speaks for A.A. as a whole.
- 475 Riverside Drive in New York City is
where the General Service Office currently resides.
We've been here since 1992.
It's a beautiful location looking over the Hudson River.
And if you, listener would like to come visit the office
and see some of the many ways GSO supports A.A.'s primary
purpose, you're more than welcome.
Tours are available every business day
and we can't wait to see you.
Just let us know ahead of time that you're coming
so we can welcome you. Now,
if you're not able to make the trip, that's no problem.
We'll bring the office to you.
You just take the 1 train up to 116th Street
and stroll a few blocks to our building.
Take the elevator up to the 11th floor past the wall covered
in serenity prayers.
- Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change.
- Translated into 26 languages
plus braille and into the reception
area where we'll start our tour.
Welcome to GSO.
- Hello, my name's Jake, I'm alcoholic.
Hi, I am Mary and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, I am Jeanie and I'm an alcoholic.
- Hi, I am Fred and I'm an - Alcoholic.
- Hello, - I'm Richard Alcoholic. My name's Christopher
I'm a recovered alcoholic. I'm Nathan, I'm an alcoholic.
- And I am Marissa and I'm not an alcoholic,
but I am gonna be your tour guide today.
- Marissa Sblendorio is a staff associate here at GSO. A.A.
membership is not a requirement
for all positions here at GSO,
but there are some that do require membership.
We'll learn more about those later.
Leading these tours is one
of the staff associates many assignments
- Starting in 1938
the General Service Office grew up around Bill W., co-founder
of Alcoholics Anonymous, the General Service Office
and the Grapevine offices occupy the entire 11th floor.
- In total, between these two service offices,
there are approximately 100 employees working here at GSO.
We begin our tour and our first stop is
to view a sepia toned wall-mounted replica of a US map used
by GSO headquarters from 1940 to 1945,
covered in about 500 push pins.
The GSO Archives department found a letter written
by a staff member in 1940 explaining the use
of the different colored pins.
- It reads,
At our office, we have a large map worked out with a system
of pins, white pins to indicate localities
where weekly meetings are held.
Red pins to indicate places where there are few men
and women working towards weekly meetings
and green pins to indicate individuals working alone.
- The pins cover about 10% of the map.
- If the map were updated today, every inch
of it would be covered in pins.
It's amazing how much the fellowship has grown
since the 1930s.
- Heading down the hallway, we meet Sharon Vasquez,
the Mets Manager, METS.
METS stands for
- Meeting Events and Travel Services department.
Overall, we see all GSO driven events when it comes
to conference, regional forums
or any one of virtual events as well.
- Then we see Beverly Jones-King.
- This is Beverly.
She is our, I'm gonna give you the correct title,
our Executive and Legal Administrator.
Beverly, would you mind just describing
what you do here at AAWS?
Very briefly. Everything
- legal is what they say.
- Thank you, Beverly. And
before we know it, we are in the office of the
- General Manager. Bob W.
- Please come in.
It's amazing. Some 30 years ago I was on a bus on Riverside
Drive down here when I was like, you know, whatever,
sober a few months sober and, and,
and I, I came on a tour of this office
and I just pinch myself that I work here now.
You know, it's just, it's such a privilege really.
It really is. I, I can't even believe I get paid to do this.
I'm glad I get paid because it's a hard job,
but it's, it's a blessing.
It's an absolute blessing. Okay,
- We'll be sitting down with Bob
for a proper conversation later this season.
So let's move on.
Down the hall from Bob's office to staff Services, everyone
who works at GSO is an employee,
but the 12 GSO staff members are all AA members
and hold rotating positions
of different regional correspondents
and service assignments, like
- Public information.
This looks like a very busy office. Yes,
- This has an - Office has a lot going
- On, - A lot of papers on the table. A lot you,
- They're all busy offices.
There's a lot of work to do
and unfortunately we're not always available
to meet all our visitors and this tour is no exception,
but we do get to sit down
and chat with Patrick on the Public Information desk
in our next episode.
So until then, let's move on down
to Treatment and Accessibility
- Here.
Welcome everyone to the General Service Office.
My name is Misha and I am an alcoholic.
So the Treatment and Accessibility desk is responsible not
only for working with the trusted servants
who work on Treatment
and Accessibility, we also do Remote
Communities, Bridging the Gap.
We have trusted servants who work on H and I,
- Which stands for Hospitals - And Institutions.
We also have trusted servants who do cooperation
with the elder community,
and we work on LIM, which is the Loaners
and Internationalist Meeting, which is an amazing thing
to get to be a part of.
I cover correspondence for the East Central Region,
and so I get to have emails with members
who sometimes they email us with a question about something
that's happening in their group
or maybe there's a conflict over traditions and,
but sometimes they, they don't know how to reach A.A.
or they haven't figured out if they have a problem.
Maybe in the middle of the night they just send an email
like randomly to A.A.
and they say, there was one I'm
actually just answering right now.
And the person said, I'm really angry all the time
and I can't stop drinking.
So I get to answer that and I get to try
and help them figure out where a meeting is near them, how
to find a, a person that they can talk to
that hopefully can help them connect
with a message that we have here.
- Does is A.A. in a business
of recommending treatment centers?
- No, that's a great question.
A.A. doesn't have any opinion on, on, on treatment centers on,
we actually don't have any opinion on whether
or not people should go to treatment.
That is entirely a, a personal decision,
a healthcare decision, one that people make
with their families, with their physician.
What A.A. does do,
however, is recognize that many of the people who do go
to treatment may self-identify as alcoholics
and may make that decision that they need help
and that Alcoholics Anonymous may have an answer for them.
- Can you maybe explain Remote Communities? Is
- That is another fabulous question.
Thank you so much. So Remote Communities are,
are communities that we think of as having a, a challenges
with finding, reaching, accessing the message
of Alcoholics Anonymous
because of barriers presented by culture,
language or geography.
So if you think about it, there are some communities
that live in really geographically remote places
that are far away from the closest A.A. meeting.
Maybe they're not even accessible by road.
There are places that people have to fly into or take a boat
or a sea plane or,
and so in some of those places, getting access
to the message is really challenging.
We also know about geographically remote places is that many
of them don't have great internet.
There are also probably right next door,
if you live in a big urban area
or even a small urban area, even a small town,
there are probably people near you
who speak languages other than
the locally spoken majority language
and who might need to hear our message of hope and recovery.
So you could be walking down the street right here on this
very block, and there might be somebody who speaks Farsi
or Urdu or, or Bengali, who doesn't know that we exist.
And so we might think of them as as being
in some ways a remote community.
And then there are also people that find themselves
unable or find it difficult to access the message
because of cultural barriers.
It might be that in their community there are additional
barriers of stigma that prevent them from, from being able
to reach out to us.
And so I think there's, there's a challenge that we have
to figure out how do we reach out to them?
- Moving on down the hall right next door to Misha. So
- This is the Corrections assignment,
- Eileen. I'm Eileen, I work on the Corrections desk.
It's amazing. I always say this desk has
spiritually rearranged me.
- Later this season we're gonna talk corrections
with Eileen in depth,
but just to give you a bit of an idea of
what the Corrections desk does.
- So the few services that we provide
through the office are the Corrections,
Correspondence Service, the Pre-release Contact Information,
as well as we respond
to over 80 to a hundred letters a week
where we provide, we provide services
to the person in custody, we respond to the letters
and from the letters we create a newsletter called Sharing
From Behind the Walls, which we produce every three months
- Throughout the office.
Are photographs showing GSO and A.A. history. Outside
the next office is A GSO favorite: a six foot tall, black
and white picture from the 1968
International Congress of A.A.
A man with a crew cut
and skinny tie talks to a woman in a white shift,
dress in matching cardigan
and a bouffant hairdo in front
of a sparkling tinsel decorated CPC display.
CPC stands for
- Cooperation with the Professional Community.
- Welcome. Hi everyone, my name is Michael.
I am the CPC Coordinator here at the GSO.
- We're gonna get more time with Michael in a later episode,
but for now here is in essence what Cooperation
with the Professional Community is. It's
- Informing professionals and it can be any professional.
We think of, of course, doctors, you know,
nurses, mental health professionals.
But I've received inquiries from athletic coaches
of a high school sports team, social workers,
community centers, churches, nursing homes,
HR departments, an owner of a small business,
any professional we define
as someone whose work might put them in touch
with somebody who needs help.
- Before we left Michael's office,
a guest noticed a note stuck
to Michael's computer monitor that read
- Turn around.
So I don't like notes, I don't like stickies,
but I have this one because sometimes, as you can see,
I'm staring at computer screens.
I need to remind myself, turn around, appreciate where I am,
take a view out over the river.
There's often a tugboat sitting out over there,
moving some freight around.
I get to see across the river to New Jersey
and I get to kind of just pause and breathe
and then I can refocus and turn back around
and I'll have a little bit more clarity
and a little more serenity hopefully to bring
that into my work.
- For more information about A.A.,
please visit our website at aa.org.
- And this way guys.
We're gonna have... -So we continue around to some other staff
and meet the staff associates,
and then we stop at another department essential
to the function of GSO.
- We're actually gonna go into the mail room right now.
How are you? This is Aubrey. He's great.
- Aubrey Pereira has worked here for more than 40 years
and has seen GSO grow in two different locations.
- We take care of all the incoming mail,
which is about 40,000 pieces annually
that we we do here and distribute 'em on the staff and,
and all the different departments.
And so we, whatever request we get that you guys send in
to staff and they, they can send it outta here.
They respond to your emails and letters, it'll be done here.
As far as product goes,
we don't do any shipping outta here anymore.
So it's, it goes outta Kansas City if it's within the
United States, if it's going overseas,
it'll go outta Canada.
A little bit of economics, you know, it's cheaper
to send it from Canada than it is to ship it from New York
and it's a lot less hassle.
So we look for every opportunity
to make sure you get your stuff on time
and save some money at the same time. In case a
fellow suffering alcoholic needs it, we have it.
- Moving on. - Hi Member Services.
- Member Services, handles matters of records, orders
and contributions.
If you contact GSO, there's a good chance
that this department will be the one that helps you.
Member Services is a part of
- The Operations department.
My name is Malini Singh and I'm the Director of Operations.
We manage over 1000 pieces of unique inventory,
warehousing and shipping, the front desk
and Member Services.
- There are signs throughout the Member Services
department that say,
- Well, Member Services is not just a department,
it's an attitude.
- Margaret Matos, Member Services Manager,
- If you would like to place an order, you can contact us.
If you would like to make a contributions
with your credit card, you can contact us.
List a group, become a GSR, you can contact us.
We are seven busy bees here working to help the fellowship.
- Member Services.
How can I help you
- You can place a book order with us
so when you order in bulk, you
- Get
sure to do Contribution
- Absolutely is as an individual contribution to your group.
- Just last year we responded to over 27,000 emails.
We processed 31,000 literature orders
and we spoke to over 14,000 individuals over the phone
helping them with all their needs.
Thank you for calling GSO, have a great day
- To find a meeting near you or a meeting online
ownload the Meeting Guide app on your mobile device.
- Just around the corner from Member Services is Grapevine.
Here's Chris, Grapevine Publisher.
- So the Grapevine is a monthly magazine
of A.A. sharing.
It's a, it's a great way for members to share
with one another in a, in a sort of mass media way.
We're also involved in a podcast of our own.
We've had a great response to that.
People can follow us on Instagram, apps for both Grapevine
and La Viña Magazines.
La Viña is our Spanish language magazine.
- The development of The Grapevine.
How did that come about?
- Well, there was, there was a group, a group
of people in New York who started a newsletter
and they came to Bill W. in the New York office and,
and pitched the idea of making a national newsletter.
Marty M. was one of the original editors.
She was a good friend of Bill's and they pitched the idea
and Bill loved it and they started the grapevine back,
I think in 1944.
Folks that are here will be able to see that.
The first copy of The Grapevine,
it's in our display case over there.
- Grapevine, Editor in Chief,
John W. showed us the display case, including
that first copy of Grapevine.
- Yeah, oh yeah. We also have the very first Grapevine.
It looks like a newspaper. It was put out in 1944.
And we have that right here on in the frame.
So the slogans you find on a meeting walls, they,
they were all originally done by the Grapevine
and that like that first things first and easy does it
and one day at a time
and think, think, think those all came from the Grapevine.
I didn't know that until I worked here.
Over 30 something books.
We have a whole book full of military experiences in A.A.
We have an atheist agnostic book, we have a woman's book,
a book for young and sober members.
We have lots of books and many
of them are in Spanish and French.
And you know, the Spanish members love,
love the books just like they love La Viña,
which is the Spanish language magazine that we produce.
- Oh, we gotta swing by La Viña. - Hey everybody, I am Paola.
I am La Viña editor.
La Viña is the international magazine
of Alcoholics Anonymous, is the Spanish magazine that we have
for the Hispanic members
that write their recovery stories for our magazine.
We used to just translate Grapevine, you know,
the stories from the gGrapevine into Spanish.
But now because the community,
the Hispanic community has grown so much, we receive
so many stories in Spanish
and we are able to only publish Spanish stories from our
Hispanic members.
Thanks everybody. Have a great time. Wonderful.
- For more information on Grapevine
and La Viña, including the magazine's podcast, Instagram
and apps, please visit aagrapevine.org
and aa aalavina.org.
- Switching gears next to Grapevine
and La Viña is our Finance department.
Let's meet our chief financial officer, Paul Konigstein.
- Hey guys, come on in. This is Paul.
So you tell us about finance, Paul.
- So finance's primary function is to make a record
of all the activities of the organization.
So record of all the contributions received
of all the literature sold
and of all the expenditures made to help carry the message.
So we have a team of eight people
who make sure that that information is recorded timely
and accurately and they categorize it to different accounts
so that we can understand where the money is coming from
and how it's being used.
And my responsibility is to take that information
and then turn it into something that's understandable
to non-financial people so that I create reports
for the trustees
and for the fellowship that show whether
as Kevin, the general service board treasurer likes
to say, AAWS and Grapevine are on a sustainable path.
- How do you go about like validating
that the money's coming from an A.A. member?
In some of those, it seems like a very difficult
mission to figure that out.
- On the contribution envelope, there's a box
to check if they're a member
and if the box is not checked,
then someone on the contributions team attempts
to contact them to confirm whether they're a member.
And if we can't confirm that they're a member,
then we return the contribution.
If someone is contributing online, the online form has a box
to check that says, I'm a member
and you can't go any further unless you check that box.
- Come this way guys. We're gonna have
- Our next stop was the Communication Services Department
where we ask the Director
what responsibilities the department handles,
- What does that entail?
That entails, as you may know, a variety
of responsibilities including our website,
aa.org, the Meeting Guide app,
our social media platforms, LinkedIn
and YouTube, Google ads, analytics
for our platforms,
newsletters including Box 459
and About A.A., mass communications
to the fellowship.
For example, messages from the General mManager news about
publishing.
And Sam, am I forgetting anything that
- The - Podcast, the podcast is a joint project with PI
that we're very excited about.
- So talk about the podcast. On the podcast.
- Exactly. And our final stop is gonna
be with publishing with David.
Hey. Hi David, how are you?
- Well, this is where it's all happens.
Yeah, the publishing department, we implement all
of the advisory actions that affect book, booklets,
pamphlets, guidelines, everything that's the written word
and the other forms of communications.
We work very closely with the communications department.
We're very happy to share our space so we can collaborate
and share resources to fulfill our responsibilities.
You know, carrying the message to the sick
and suffering Alcoholic is our mission
and we like to think that we do that
and we extend the hand of A.A.
And in that hand perhaps is an item of literature,
maybe a Big Book, maybe a link to the website,
maybe an audio book.
We're seeing a huge uptick in interest
and in consumption of our audio book material.
Also projects like
how can we print more effectively our, our big focus for us
with our print production
and distribution, the new jacketless hardcovers are a
godsend, it's very popular format in trade publishing.
Now for the first time we have the big book and the 12
and 12 in this gorgeous, gorgeous show them what they won.
A jacketless hardcover
that cuts down on the delivery time,
saves in the expense category.
We're always looking on how
to contain costs for the fellowship.
This is dollars in the basket
and we can do that with new formats
and we're working on some others.
So stay tuned.
- Stay tuned indeed, because
besides hearing more from David later in the season,
we are just cracking the surface of all we have to share
with you, including rarely
before heard recordings from the GSO Archives.
There is far too much to share from Archives
to include in this episode,
which is why we will be dedicating an entire episode
to it later in the season.
If you are interested in visiting GSO in person,
you can schedule a tour by emailing gsotours@aa.org
or calling 212-870-3430.
For current and all past issues of Sharing from
Behind the Walls, please visit the Newsletter section
of the Resources tab on aa.org.
We hope you enjoyed this episode.
Be sure to subscribe so you can keep coming back.
- In this podcast
we respect the anonymity of AA members.
Last names are shared only For those who are not in A.A.
Thank you for listening to our Primary Purpose,
a podcast produced by the General Service Office on behalf
of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in the US
and Canada.