A contact person for the EA community

[Julia_Wise]

I work at the Cen­tre for Effec­tive Altru­ism as the Com­mu­nity Li­ai­son, which in­cludes be­ing a point per­son for the EA com­mu­nity. I’m a per­son you can come to with con­cerns about prob­lems you’ve no­ticed or ex­pe­rienced in the EA com­mu­nity.

The best way to con­tact me is ju­lia.wise@cen­tre­fore­ffec­tivealtru­ism.org. You can also con­tact me anony­mously.

Why have a point per­son?

Peo­ple who en­counter a prob­lem in the com­mu­nity of­ten don’t feel up to han­dling it on their own. It can be helpful to have help from some­one with ex­pe­rience in this area and time to ded­i­cate to the role.

Hav­ing a cen­tral point for col­lect­ing in­for­ma­tion al­lows pat­terns to be rec­og­nized. For ex­am­ple, imag­ine that three differ­ent peo­ple ex­pe­rience a prob­lem from the same per­son. If there’s no one to col­lect this data, each case ap­pears to be a one-off in­ci­dent. But if some­one knows about all three in­ci­dents, the na­ture of the prob­lem is much clearer.

What hap­pens with this in­for­ma­tion?

Some ex­am­ples of steps I’ve taken, with help from other CEA staff and vol­un­teers:

• Helping friends of a com­mu­nity mem­ber who was ex­pe­rienc­ing a men­tal health crisis co­or­di­nate to bet­ter sup­port their friend

• Pro­vid­ing sup­port to peo­ple ex­pe­rienc­ing emo­tional or men­tal health prob­lems at EA events

• Speak­ing to peo­ple about ways their be­hav­ior has made peo­ple un­com­fortable or caused prob­lems (for ex­am­ple, mild sex­ual ha­rass­ment), and ask­ing them to change their behavior

• Restrict­ing peo­ple from at­tend­ing CEA’s events based on past se­ri­ous prob­lem behavior

• Helping lo­cal groups and events such as EAGx con­fer­ences set up similar sys­tems for han­dling com­mu­nity problems

My background

I’m a li­censed in­de­pen­dent clini­cal so­cial worker. In the United States this re­quires a two-year mas­ter’s de­gree fo­cus­ing on helping in­di­vi­d­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties im­prove their own well-be­ing, plus two years of su­per­vised work ex­pe­rience. My fo­cus dur­ing my mas­ter’s pro­gram was on men­tal health.

My ex­pe­rience in­cludes:

• Vol­un­teer­ing at a women’s do­mes­tic vi­o­lence shelter, coun­sel­ing callers to a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and sex­ual as­sault hotline, and ac­com­pa­ny­ing sex­ual as­sault sur­vivors dur­ing ex­am­i­na­tions at a hospital

• Work­ing in a psy­chi­a­tric hos­pi­tal with peo­ple in men­tal health crisis, and helping them plan for re­turn to the com­mu­nity at the end of their stay in the hospital

• Coun­sel­ing in­mates and de­tainees in a jail, in­clud­ing both sur­vivors and per­pe­tra­tors of com­mu­nity vi­o­lence, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, and sex­ual assault

So­cial work is fo­cused not on blame or pun­ish­ment, but on reach­ing bet­ter out­comes by re­duc­ing risk of fu­ture harm and by con­nect­ing peo­ple with re­sources and sup­port. This ap­proach is very much the one I use in my work in the effec­tive al­tru­ism com­mu­nity.

Confidentiality

If you con­tact me about a prob­lem you’ve ex­pe­rienced or a con­cern you have, I will keep it as con­fi­den­tial as you wish. Here are some pos­si­bil­ities:

• You just want to vent or dis­cuss your con­cern, and do not want the in­for­ma­tion to go any further

• You are ok with me dis­cussing an anonymized ver­sion of your con­cern with cer­tain other peo­ple with your permission

• You would like to be put in touch with other peo­ple who have ex­pe­rienced a similar prob­lem (with their per­mis­sion)

• You would like me to let oth­ers know about the situ­a­tion, for ex­am­ple the or­ga­niz­ers of a lo­cal group where you ex­pe­rienced a problem

• You would like some­one to speak to the per­son who caused a prob­lem about their behavior

The time and stress in­volved in a pub­lic dis­cus­sion of one’s per­sonal ex­pe­rience mean that of­ten peo­ple do not want to pub­li­cly dis­cuss prob­lems they have ex­pe­rienced. I un­der­stand this, and I don’t pres­sure any­one to share in­for­ma­tion any more widely than they want to.

Ex­cep­tions:

If I thought some­one were in phys­i­cal dan­ger, I would act to re­duce that dan­ger. That might in­clude break­ing con­fi­den­tial­ity. For ex­am­ple, if you tell me you’re plan­ning to phys­i­cally hurt some­one, I would warn them.

Be­cause of the rules for so­cial work­ers in my area, the only time I have a le­gal obli­ga­tion to con­tact the au­thor­i­ties is if you bring me a con­cern speci­fi­cally in my role as a so­cial worker (“Ju­lia, I’m tel­ling you this be­cause you’re a so­cial worker”) AND if the con­cern is about

• A child un­der 18 who is be­ing abused or neglected

• A per­son with an in­tel­lec­tual dis­abil­ity (men­tal re­tar­da­tion) who is be­ing abused, or

• A per­son 60 or older who is be­ing abused.

Op­tions be­sides talk­ing to me

I know peo­ple of­ten don’t feel com­fortable dis­cussing a prob­lem they’ve ex­pe­rienced with some­one they don’t know well. Some com­mu­ni­ties (Lon­don, Bay Area) have lo­cal point peo­ple as well, and group or­ga­niz­ers are an­other pos­si­ble re­source. If you have a prob­lem and would rather not talk to me, I sug­gest ask­ing if your lo­cal group has a par­tic­u­lar con­tact per­son for com­mu­nity prob­lems.

If you’re a lo­cal or­ga­nizer and are in­ter­ested in set­ting up a point per­son in your lo­cal group, feel free to con­tact me for more in­for­ma­tion about this. ju­lia.wise@cen­tre­fore­ffec­tivealtru­ism.org

[Shri_Samson]

Thank you, Ju­lia, for mak­ing the EA move­ment feel like an ac­tual com­mu­nity by and for hu­man be­ings.

[Jonas Vollmer]

Have you con­sid­ered us­ing a ser­vice that al­lows for anony­mous con­ver­sa­tions be­tween you and the other per­son? This would en­able you to re­spond to and dis­cuss anony­mous sub­mis­sions. (I’m not sure this is needed – just an in­put.)