Hi Martyna. The problem you mentioned resonates a lot! There are some great initiatives I could see in the comments as well, which is good since it shows people in EA do recognize this as a problem. If I may suggest, you might also want to take a look at Inflection Point as well. It’s a project to help people resolve the bottlenecks they are facing in trying to move into more high-impact careers. I’m also a part of the team and we’ve talked to 50+ participants already ranging from ages 20-50, with background in Engineering, Media, Consulting, Entrepreneurship, Biotech, Machine Learning, Animal Welfare, Global conflict studies (China-US in particular) etc. The bottlenecks that have come across the most for the people we’ve talked to so far have been:
Access to collaborators
Funding
Mentorship
Lack of understanding on problem area
We’re working on helping our participants with these aspects by acting like a personalized concierge service, atleast for our pilot. We are currently alpha testing the service, and are looking for people at professional inflection points who want to work on something value-aligned, but are having trouble finding a project or people to work on that project with. If you’re interested, please fill in this form (takes less than 5 minutes): https://forms.gle/9hoS9v6NkQwXnLso9 or you can also email joininflectionpoint@gmail.com !
I’m very excited to see a new team to lead the next EAGx in India. As co-lead of the previous iteration, for any potential applicants, I’d like to share some bits from my experience. I think the most rewarding bit of the entire organising experience is the opportunity to enable and catalyse a young nascent community towards action, and explore the potential of all the things it can lead to. On a personal level, I got to work with amazing people (including CEA’s events team, especially @Ollie Base) and all of us stood by each other through some tough times, I got to experience what it’s like to take hard decisions when stakes are high, the rush and simultaneously the feeling of months of effort unfolding before your eyes. It’s a lovely feeling :)