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Our main objective for this workshop is to share experience strength and hope on how AA can thrive with even greater inclusivity and sensitivity to barriers to accessing AA.

It's our great hope from tonight that AA members, our sponsors and all our fellowship can better share information, increase awareness and support one another.

Tonight we have invited five speakers who are sober members of alcoholics anonymous, Madeleine P from Happy Valley and a diverse panel discussing their personal struggles, barriers and solutions regarding safety, inclusivity, and diversity in AA.

Part of my background is that as a member of alcoholics anonymous, I began to really consider this topic quite about 15, 18 years ago in my own personal life.

And like many of us, I came from a background where I wasn't a safe to child. I got sober and came into the rooms where I wasn't safe in the rooms.

And so it really has been one of the things that has been as a forefront of my mind, you know, part of my story is I went on to become a forensic nurse after I got sober and worked with people who were victims of child abuse domestic violence and sexual assault.

So that also really made me examine a lot of the culture within our rooms. And I think that's probably the most important thing that has shifted in the last few years.

The things that we talk about tonight are not new. They've always been with us, but our vision to those things are our insight into those things has changed.

Things that we never considered before, which are actually even criminal actions, we've actually started to look at it and say, wait a minute, this is criminal.

Things that are just disruptive or inappropriate, I just think our entire culture as the safety card talks about being a microcosm of that society, that microcosm has been shifting.

And things that we just have the old attitude as we don't talk about it in present company kind of attitude has really taken a shift in our box anonymous.

Where we are saying yes, this is appropriate to talk about. Yes, it is okay to address it. Yes, it is okay to say it's not all right.

But I think that's been one of the biggest shifts that's been happening in it, you know, they always say, you know, changing our box anonymous, you know, a need for a reaction is three years.

It takes us about 30 days to make instant coffee. So, you know, we are slow movers, but we are seeing what's happening in the outside world begin to affect the inside world.

So, I think that's just to really start taking a look at that. I think our demographics slow is it may be because we are still predominantly a 55 year old white male society, but even some of that demographic and the voices within it are starting to change.

And that has changed the communication and the conversation within the room. So, I think those are some of the things that have really started to drive some of this.

When we talk about doing a group inventory, there's nothing worth for me than seeing a group who does an inventory and all they did was pat each other on the back and say, ain't it great? The wind stopped blowing.

And they really didn't ever say, what could be really do better? And I think for me, when we talk about safety, we talk about inclusivity and diversity.

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