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Covid-19 has reversed years of gains in the war on poverty
This coronavirus affects everyone, but not equally. The young often shrug off the virus; the old often die of it. The rich shrug off the economic shock; the poor cannot. Because of covid-19, the number of extremely poor people (ie, those making less than $1.90 a day) will rise by 70m-100m this year, the World Bank predicts. Using a broader measure, including those who lack basic shelter or clean water and children who go hungry, the ranks of the poor will swell by 240m-490m this year, says the un. That could reverse almost a decade of progress (see article). If a vaccine is found, economies will no doubt bounce back. But widespread vaccination will take years and the very poor cannot wait that long. By then, malnutrition will have stunted a tragic number of children’s bodies and minds.
Looks like CEA is on there, but no ability to segment by specific funds. Probably due to it being a single charity. Each of the EA Funds (along with GWWC and other programs) are programs within CEA (a registered charity in the USA and UK).
Similarly other charities with single programs (like GiveDirectly which has Basic Income, USA etc), it looks like you can't specify what program you want it to go to.
Had no idea this existed... joining!
Great work team!
The experience has been really fantastic. Very rewarding, plus it's helped with training my 'socratic questioning' style with adults 😀
Personally, I find this an argument for being more emotionally motivated by near term outcomes (even while being more philosophically motivated by long term outcomes).
Three ways I've seen this done well (often in tandem):
1. Diversity of attention: Working on a longtermist project while paying attention to to how other parts of their lives (e.g. allocating some donations for addressing more immediate problems, changing diet for moral circle expansion, building relationships, hobbies, creative works) bring them joy and motivation. It could be very demotivating if one is purely "all-in" (devoting huge amounts of time/thought/identity) on something that feels incredibly far away.
2. Focus on near-term outcomes of longtermist projects. For example, you're focused on long term political stability and working on changing the voting system of a local government area and the immediate benefit that provides people.
3. Focus on immediate progress towards longtermist projects. Every project has goals that you reach such as getting funding, publishing a paper, hiring a new colleague, running an event. Take the time to celebrate these wins.
The GWWWC Try Giving pledge (any percent above 1%, any period of time)
There's Primary Ethics in Australia that is starting to take off in schools. Some of us in the EA Sydney group volunteered to be teachers (mostly telling stories from a script and facilitating discussion to help kids discuss ethical questions).
There's also this https://www.eawork.club/
I think a local opportunity is a nice way for people to meet people around them (e.g. be on welcoming duty at a local meetup) and then remote can be valuable if done well.
We're currently taking volunteers at Giving What We Can also 😀
Here's the expression of interest form: http://bit.ly/gwwc-volunteer
Have subscribed and downloaded the episodes you mentioned. Looking forward to hearing them 😀
Another against:
I also find it very helpful to be very close to people who share a lot of core values but are not entirely aligned/identities aren't too similar. You end up with diversity of thought in your own life. Plus, it's a lot better to bounce off and model the general population when you have people near and dear to you who think differently.
I'm pleasantly impressed you perpetuated a good social norm by thanking someone for perpetuating a good social norm. Well done and thank you.
Alas another year goes by and Sydney doesn't make the cut despite hosting another EAGx 😜
Nice work, again!
In future years I'd be very interested in seeing a citizenship question and a question about what city someone was in when they first became involved in EA. In Australia it's a running joke that we have an EA brain drain to USA/UK, especially for direct work opportunities (noting also that Australia has many fewer direct work opportunities as is also a way to read the data).
Finding opportunities for people to do good without needing to relocate (sometimes leaving a vacuum in community building in the city they are from) is something we're very interested in exploring further.
I really love this concept guys and the prototype is fantastic!
I can't get a handle on the full functionality as I'm in Australia so I strongly encourage the US folk here on the forum to download it and have a go as you guys will get the proper experience.
Feedback and user testing makes a big difference for the success of these apps – also bearing in mind when getting feedback from EAs that most people aren't like a lot of EAs so will prefer simplicity over detail.
Keep up the awesome work!!
Neat! Where can we sign up to be notified of the iOS and Android versions?
Do you have much data on the ~900 (2/7 of responses) that were invalid and what those reasons are?
Nice work! Very interesting!
33 people said Sydney which ranks us at #11 (between Cambridge and Los Angeles)... do we get a radio button next time ;)
Sorry I seemed to miss this comment earlier 😅
Thanks for pointing it out – fixed now 😀
Thanks Peter – I've written an article that explains the differences generally speaking between different approaches to recruitment: https://www.positly.com/blogs/post/comparing-positly-with-alternative-recruitment-methods
The core difference is our approach: We think a researcher’s job isn’t to figure out complex systems to find quality participants, so we provide best practice research methods directly into our tools. We allow researchers to customise their studies in many ways, but a researcher isn’t required to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on details such as preventing duplication, calculating incentives, performing quality checks or other measures. Positly does all of this (and more) right out of the box. When we design a feature, we think about the many different contexts in which the feature could be used. Then we try to get to the root of the problem that the researcher has and abstract the solution to the most universally useful feature. Finally, we ensure that the feature behaves in a way that the researcher would expect. Our development process means that all researchers on Positly benefit from a versatile tool that is customisable to their needs. As we develop and release new features, Positly can be applied in different research contexts, all while maintaining a familiar and intuitive interface – freeing time for researchers to do what they do best.
I've currently got some draft comparisons with specific other platforms which I can share with anyone who get's in touch (not posting publicly as I want to make sure they're bulletproof first when making specific comparisons to other companies).
Thanks for sharing!
The consistent item on my budget that I find we struggle to keep low is eating out, largely because that's the only way we see a lot of people (close friends and family). I wrote about this in my blog post when I limited my food to <$2 a day for a month, food is social and that's a tough thing.
Also, I read your other post about setting your salary based on world's average GDP and was shocked to see rent that low – rent is at minimum 5x that much in Sydney 😳
I'm really interested in what concrete suggestions there are for things that could be direct, effective and engaging for members.
I love this idea with so many 😍emojis