I am talking about the LatAm community because this is the community I am familiar with
I don’t have great insight into the grantmaker case in specific. I suspect they are overvaluing general community-building work over cause-specific work, which I think is a reasonable thing to disagree on.
While the subjects of the post have been repeatedly discouraged (by the grantmakers and others) to do cause-specific work in LatAm, they have come to interact and meet other individuals from UK/US who lack expertise in the topic who were encouraged and supported to do cause-specific work in LatAm (by different funders, I believe).
I conjecture (but do not claim) that people in US/UK are better connected and have more opportunities for encouragement and funding compared to people in LatAm. If the people encouraging the US/UK people met these LatAm people, I think they would agree they are better prepared to do it (since they have cause-specific expertise and local knowledge).
Thanks so much Jaime. I completely agree that EA has massively undervalued the comparative advantage of local people working locally due to “cause specific expertise and local knowledge”.
In Uganda here smart, compassionate EA focused people could achieve so much doing local EA focused work, both through letting EA principles guide what they do and influencing others. I struggle to see how they could have more impact through many of the suggestions on the EA guide for lower income countries posts, or by getting involved in international work.
Having grant proposals repeatedly turned down is normal though. Just because you are part of EA doesn’t mean that your grant proposal has enough merit to meet a funding bar. It’s very hard for me to comment on funding not being given, without knowing what was applied for and what they planned to do.
Is more like:
I am talking about the LatAm community because this is the community I am familiar with
I don’t have great insight into the grantmaker case in specific. I suspect they are overvaluing general community-building work over cause-specific work, which I think is a reasonable thing to disagree on.
While the subjects of the post have been repeatedly discouraged (by the grantmakers and others) to do cause-specific work in LatAm, they have come to interact and meet other individuals from UK/US who lack expertise in the topic who were encouraged and supported to do cause-specific work in LatAm (by different funders, I believe).
I conjecture (but do not claim) that people in US/UK are better connected and have more opportunities for encouragement and funding compared to people in LatAm. If the people encouraging the US/UK people met these LatAm people, I think they would agree they are better prepared to do it (since they have cause-specific expertise and local knowledge).
Thanks so much Jaime. I completely agree that EA has massively undervalued the comparative advantage of local people working locally due to “cause specific expertise and local knowledge”.
In Uganda here smart, compassionate EA focused people could achieve so much doing local EA focused work, both through letting EA principles guide what they do and influencing others. I struggle to see how they could have more impact through many of the suggestions on the EA guide for lower income countries posts, or by getting involved in international work.
Having grant proposals repeatedly turned down is normal though. Just because you are part of EA doesn’t mean that your grant proposal has enough merit to meet a funding bar. It’s very hard for me to comment on funding not being given, without knowing what was applied for and what they planned to do.
That makes sense, thanks!