Starting a New Meeting
Suggestions on How to Start a New Meeting
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The only requirement to start a new meeting is the desire and willingness to do so.
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Talk to other OSPA members about your idea and ask them if they might be interested in being involved in and attending the meeting.
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Create the new OSPA meeting format. You may borrow from or be inspired by the formats of other meetings. The group conscience of the meeting membership can also shape the format, using OSPA’s Fourth Tradition as a guide.
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Download the primary readings of OSPA. The inclusion of these readings may vary depending upon the group conscience of its members, using OSPA’s Fourth Tradition as a guide.
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Establish the day and time of the meeting, preferably at a time that will not conflict with other existing OSPA meetings.
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Decide which audio or video conferencing platform you would like to use for the meeting. If you are unsure which platform to use or have questions about this, feel free to contact the OSPA World Service Organization (WSO).
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Have a representative from your group attend the OSPA World Service meeting to announce your meeting to other members and inform the Web Administrator of the upcoming website update. See the Intergroup page for the next OSPA Intergroup meeting date and time.
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Once you have decided on the date for your first meeting, contact the OSPA Web Administrator with the meeting’s name, day and time, description, and instructions for how members can join. Let the Webmaster know when they can add the new meeting information to the OSPA Meetings schedule on the website.
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Spread the word about the new meeting by making announcements at other OSPA meetings
Anyone can start a new meeting. Any two or more OSPA members gathered together may call themselves an OSPA meeting. Please observe the OSPA Traditions below.
The 12 Traditions of OSPA
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on OSPA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - a loving Higher Power as may be expressed through our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for OSPA membership is a desire to stop skin picking.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OSPA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose - to carry its message to the skin picker who still suffers.
6. An OSPA group or OSPA as a whole ought never endorse, finance, or lend the OSPA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every OSPA group ought to be fully self supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Obsessive Skin Pickers Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. OSPA as such ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Obsessive Skin Pickers Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the OSPA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.