Outreach

Outreach services help new groups start up in those portions of the region not served by any area committee. The region’s member areas may not be able to provide service to the entire state, province, or country. In these places, regional committees frequently provide a variety of outreach services. Correspondence is maintained with geographically isolated NA groups, keeping them in touch with the larger world of Narcotics Anonymous and providing them with the assistance usually offered by area service committees. When other NA groups are formed in close proximity, the region assists them in forming an area committee so that those groups can support themselves and provide their own direct services. In the meantime, contacts with local treatment agencies and practitioners, civil authorities, and community organizations may be established by the regional committee, generating greater awareness of the NA program.

Outreach subcommittees serve as the outstretched hand of an established NA community to isolated groups and addicts, particularly in large rural areas. By phone, by mail, and by car they make sure that no group and no addict has to go through it alone if at all possible by reaching addicts with additional needs and making our meetings and other services more accessible to them.

The subcommittee helps keep geographically isolated groups and addicts in touch with the mainstream of the NA Fellowship.

The outreach subcommittee is not the only subcommittee concerned with reaching out to isolated addicts. Sometimes addicts are isolated by factors other than geography: social, economic, and cultural factors, for instance. PI, H&I, and phoneline subcommittees can help an area committee focus additional attention on the needs of addicts in our own communities who, for one reason or another, have not found NA accessible. Area service committees and their subcommittees need to do whatever they can to ensure that recovery is available to any addict who seeks it, “regardless of age, race, sexual identity, creed, religion, or lack of religion.” Area subcommittees engaging in community outreach activities may find help by contacting their Region, or the World Service Office.