I actually did something similar: a 1-month internship in Kigoma, Tanzania, for an EA-inspired for-profit. I paid all costs apart from housing. I also think being an EA group organiser made it easy for them to take me. (Unfortunately?) I learned that it was not a great personal fit for me, but it was still a good experience, and I think the founders appreciated my contribution.
In retrospect and purely from an impact perspective, I guess that it would have been more impactful if I had donated the equivalent cost of my flight tickets and vaccines to them. With that money, my botec says that they could maybe have gotten 3-6x more than the value I produced, by hiring East African students for a total of 3-6 months worth of internships. If the money didn’t come from my pocket but from the university, like it did for Annika, that wouldn’t have been a counterfactual.
In retrospect, from a not-impact perspective, I’m happy I did the internship. I gained a lot from it.
I actually did something similar: a 1-month internship in Kigoma, Tanzania, for an EA-inspired for-profit. I paid all costs apart from housing. I also think being an EA group organiser made it easy for them to take me. (Unfortunately?) I learned that it was not a great personal fit for me, but it was still a good experience, and I think the founders appreciated my contribution.
In retrospect and purely from an impact perspective, I guess that it would have been more impactful if I had donated the equivalent cost of my flight tickets and vaccines to them. With that money, my botec says that they could maybe have gotten 3-6x more than the value I produced, by hiring East African students for a total of 3-6 months worth of internships. If the money didn’t come from my pocket but from the university, like it did for Annika, that wouldn’t have been a counterfactual.
In retrospect, from a not-impact perspective, I’m happy I did the internship. I gained a lot from it.
For context, I live in Finland.