A way your decisions are underrated is that this charity, if it existed, would possibly be much easier to fundraise for than GiveWell. Like rather than talking about bednets you’d have pictures of actual children. Perhaps typical donors would give to that competitively.
Have you considered writing up these as manifund impact grants. I can imagine some people might buy having saved some fraction of a child and then you’d have more money to spend. Likewise if you saw promising opportunities you could put them on there.
Finally I find it pretty tragic that you might do less of this for white saviour reasons. White saviour or no, you helped Sunday a lot. I imagine her and her family are not worried about white saviourism. What’s your experience of the people you know resenting and your wife’s help?
Thanks for the manifund idea, but to be honest in the short term at least I’m focused on OneDay Health and am not looking to either do this systematically or set up a charity around this at this stage (although the encouragement has been great and I’d be open to it in future). I also think if someone was going to start a charity around this, as a few people have suggested it might be fairly straightforward to target non-EA donors which I believe where possible is better than supping from the limited EA money pots.
The white saviour thing is complex but I do think its worth thinking deeply about the potential harms of any intervention (reputational harms, disempowering local social entrepreneurs from filling this kind of space, disrupting local systems of mutual support etc.). There are always down sides to global heal interventions and we often underrate them.
You’re absolutely right though in Northern Uganda almost everyone is appreciative of any kind of help. In neighbouring countries though the situation is very different I think because there were far greater negative effects from Colonialism. No-one has ever resented help in 10 years. There are a handful of elite Ugandans in the capital Kampala who would probably resent this kind of thing, but its a very small percentage of the population.
A way your decisions are underrated is that this charity, if it existed, would possibly be much easier to fundraise for than GiveWell. Like rather than talking about bednets you’d have pictures of actual children. Perhaps typical donors would give to that competitively.
Have you considered writing up these as manifund impact grants. I can imagine some people might buy having saved some fraction of a child and then you’d have more money to spend. Likewise if you saw promising opportunities you could put them on there.
Finally I find it pretty tragic that you might do less of this for white saviour reasons. White saviour or no, you helped Sunday a lot. I imagine her and her family are not worried about white saviourism. What’s your experience of the people you know resenting and your wife’s help?
Thanks Nathan for the encouragement!
Thanks for the manifund idea, but to be honest in the short term at least I’m focused on OneDay Health and am not looking to either do this systematically or set up a charity around this at this stage (although the encouragement has been great and I’d be open to it in future). I also think if someone was going to start a charity around this, as a few people have suggested it might be fairly straightforward to target non-EA donors which I believe where possible is better than supping from the limited EA money pots.
The white saviour thing is complex but I do think its worth thinking deeply about the potential harms of any intervention (reputational harms, disempowering local social entrepreneurs from filling this kind of space, disrupting local systems of mutual support etc.). There are always down sides to global heal interventions and we often underrate them.
You’re absolutely right though in Northern Uganda almost everyone is appreciative of any kind of help. In neighbouring countries though the situation is very different I think because there were far greater negative effects from Colonialism. No-one has ever resented help in 10 years. There are a handful of elite Ugandans in the capital Kampala who would probably resent this kind of thing, but its a very small percentage of the population.