This reminds me of a post describing firsthand accounts of what starvation actually feels like, or the process of being swallowed whole that makes up a large portion of wild fish deaths. Such posts are horrific, but very important in understanding why we do what we do. They can be very motivating. Thank you for writing, I am a big fan of your work in general.Â
This is so exciting to see! I've been facilitating for EA Virtual Programs for years, and have anecdotally seen a significant uptick in participants from the African continent in the last year+. I'm very excited to see the growth of EA values & community in new regions. Thank you for writing this retrospective! (also, 11 valuable new connections per participant seems quite good, I think? So well done on that!)
As a developer of fellowships and courses in EA, this is something I constantly consider as a failure mode-- building something that's interesting, and delights impressive participants, but doesn't have a strong ToC that actually makes the world lower suffering in expectation. Thanks for making this post, it's a really important consideration that might be given too little credence much of the time!
I get updates from all these lists emailed to me, and the EA Opportunities Board is one of my favorites because it often has part-time opportunities (eg fellowships, courses, part time work) which I think don't make it into some of the other lists' headlines (either because the opportunity is small, or too EA-niche). Just my two cents.
It only asked me for my name (not citizenship, residency, or address), so not sure if they cross check with a citizens directory or something, but the UK didn't require citizenship to answer a public consultation on the kinds of causes their international aid should go towards so it seems like they just allow anyone to give input.Â
Super important to test our assumptions, including on branding, especially since what sounds good to those already in the EA community might be totally different to what convinces "outsiders". Great work and thanks for writing up a post to get the word out!