Hi there,
Welcome to the monthly EA Chicago newsletter 👋
Check this space for upcoming events and a debrief of the best EA Chicago content from across the web.
Be sure to stay in touch during the month via our Eventbrite page and Slack workspace.
EACHI October Event Schedule
October Learning Event: The Creator Movie Night + X-risk Discussion on Sunday, October 15th (time TBA; event details can be found HERE)
October Social Event: Halloween Game Night + Party on Sunday, October 22th from 7-10pm (event details can be found HERE)
Upcoming Events
In Person
Applications are open for several effective altruism conferences:
· EA Global: Boston (27-29 October) is for people who have a solid understanding of effective altruism and who are taking significant actions on the basis of key ideas in the movement. Apply by 13 October.
· EAGxPhilippines (20 - 22 October) is for people in South East and East Asia. Tickets are $0-100. Apply by 30 September.
Virtual
· The future of effective altruism relies on effective giving: EA Anywhere
Join me (Grace, Head of Marketing at GWWC) as I give a talk called The future of effective altruism relies on effective giving on Wednesday, September 27th at 8am UTC (6pm Sydney, 1.30pm Delhi)
· Dr. Neil Buddy Shah, presented by One for the World: Webinar
Join One for the World for an event featuring guest speaker Dr. Neil Buddy Shah, CEO at Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), former Managing Director at GiveWell, and former CEO and Founding Partner at IDinsight. Dr. Shah will spend the hour discussing his experience in the global health sector and his vision for how the sector will grow. Thursday October 19, 4pm UTC (9am San Francisco, 12pm New York, 6pm Berlin) Register here.
News & Updates
Evaluators, grantmakers and incubators
· GiveWell has published several new pages on grants it has recently recommended including: $5.2 million to MiracleFeet to scale up its existing clubfoot treatment program in the Philippines and to expand to Chad and Côte d’Ivoire over five years; a one-year, $451,212 grant to One Acre Fund to scope potential opportunities to implement in-line chlorination in Rwanda; and a $1.5 million exit grant to Unlimit Health for its support of deworming programs in Burundi and Mauritania. If you'd like to sign up for email updates when new research materials from GiveWell are published, you can do so here.
· As you may remember, in 2022, GiveWell directed a grant to PATH to support the expansion of the RTS,S malaria vaccine in areas of Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi. GiveWell recently published notes from a follow-up conversation with PATH about their progress. You can read more about the grant and key updates on the vaccine rollout on GiveWell's blog here.
· Charity Entrepreneurship is still accepting applications to its February-March 2024 Incubation Program. This round, CE is hoping to help launch nonprofits focused on childhood vaccination reminders, mass media prevention of violence against women, influencing EU fish welfare policy through strategic work in Greece, influencing key stakeholders of the emerging insect industry, and fundraising for animal advocacy. Learn more about these plans here. Applications will be open until September 30, 2023.
· Rethink Priorities is hiring for a Chief Operations Officer (Deadline Oct 1; salary range: $130,000 - $135,000 USD)
Cause areas
Animal welfare
· Faunalytics' latest report, Jurors’ Reflections on the Smithfield Piglet Rescue Trial, is a qualitative analysis that will help advocates understand why jurors sided with the defense, how to potentially apply these findings to future trials, and what forms of animal activism are most convincing.
· Animal Charity Evaluator (ACE)’s new blog, written by Daniel Abiliba, highlights why it's important to consider local contexts when evaluating progress in cage-free corporate campaigns and other animal advocacy work in Africa.
· This blog post discussesACE’s engagement survey (part of its process for assessing the organisational health of a charity) which is sent to staff working at the charities under evaluation. It outlines the process ACE followed for this year’s survey, potential limitations of the approach,, and some ways ACE is seeking to address these.
· Our World in Data released a new page on Animal Welfare
Global health and development
· New Incentives has enrolled 2 million infants in its program, helping protect them from deadly yet preventable diseases. The organisation has been providing cash incentives to increase childhood vaccination rates since 2017 and has been rapidly expanding the program. It took 6 years to enroll its first million infants and only 9 months to enroll its second million.
· Deworming: How do you get treatment to people who need it most? Unlimit Health explains a crucial tool for ensuring that treatment campaigns are as effective as possible.
· Action for Happiness reached a new milestone of over 1 million user activities triggered for their free online "10 Days of Happiness" program, which helps people learn skills to support their mental wellbeing
· A new article Why we didn’t get a malaria vaccine sooner from Saloni Dattani, Rachel Glennerster and Siddhartha Haria explores why it took 141 years to develop a vaccine for a disease that kills hundreds of thousands each year.
· Malaria Consortium published a blog post explaining each step in the process for distributing anti-malaria medicines, titled: istributing anti-malaria medicines to 24 million children: The supply chain step-by-step
Long-term future
· A new TED talk on climate change from Our World in Data’s Hannah Ritchie was released, titled: Are we the last generation -- or the first sustainable one?
· From the Nuclear Threat Initiative: AI and the Bomb: A Conversation with Author James Johnson. Will AI make accidental nuclear war more likely?
Community
· The 80,000 Hours career guide has just been updated and improved for 2023, and it draws on over ten years of research to give you concrete, practical advice to help you plan a fulfilling career that does good. The 2023 guide is available for free online and in paperback, ebook and audio formats.
· The Effective Altruism and Judaism Intro Fellowship is an 8-week virtual program you can do alongside school or work that explores the core ideas of effective altruism and their relationship to Jewish tradition, texts, culture, and history. Learn more and apply by October 11th at: EAforJews.org/Fellowship!
(Please contact EACHI’s organizer, Samantha Kassirer, if you have something you’d like featured here next month!)
We look forward to seeing you in person or online!
