Making A Difference Through Effective Altruism

Often we debate and discuss issues but come away with more questions than answers: What can be done about an issue? What is the best action that can be taken? Is this issue the one I should be focusing my time and efforts on, what about all the others?

The Effective Altruism movement tries to answer these kinds of questions. Effective Altruism is the application of science, reason and rationality to the goal of making the world a better place. The challenge for those in the Effective Altruism community is to answer the question "how best can I do good in the world?" and then to act on the answer.

For example, over the last decade organisations have sprung up to research which charities are the most cost effective, which careers allow you to do the most good, how to decide what causes to focus on, and so on.

This meeting is a joint meeting with the Effective Altruism London Group.

At this meeting we will have three speakers, one who will give us an overview of what Effective Altruism is, another from a major charity that has independently been assessed as highly effective and a third who will talk about how these ideas have shaped their life.

We're thrilled to have Alan Fenwick, director of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative speaking. SCI is a super organisation which combats intestinal worms for the world's poorest people and has been independently assessed as one of the world's most effective charities.

We'll have a short introduction to Effective Altruism and a third speaker to talk about how giving has impacted their life.

After the speakers, hang out for wine and nibbles.

Other speakers will appear here soon.

You can find out about the Effective Altruism Group on their meetup site here .. (http://www.meetup.com/Effective-Altruism-London)

And also further reading on effective altruism can be found at :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism

http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/01/effective-altruism-peter-singer-at-ted2013/

http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/01/effective-altruism-peter-s

This is an enterprising group run by Samuel Hilton and Claire Nyquist and we are really pleased to be putting this event on jointly with them