Currently aiming looking to become more active within Effective Altruism and to orient my career towards impact as I finish my Bachelorās in Industrial Engineering.
Due to the scale of the problem and my perceived personal fit, I am aiming towards biosecurity, especially by working on practical, engineering-related challenges in the field. However, given AIās potentially greater scale and shorter timelines, I am willing to pivot if I preceive I could make a greater contribution there.
Always curious and open to new experiences and environments.
Very much agree. I want to emphasise again that the fact that a skill is lacking in a region (native-level English proficiency, love and attention towards the children) doesnāt mean that the net impact will be positive; I mentioned the sense of abandonment once volunteers leave and the possibility of overreliance on foreign aid, and surely there are several other hidden side effects. But it hints that there is real value that can be added by non-locals, and that the challenge then is to maximise it and minimise the counterforces.
Thereās something else I havenāt discussed in this post. It can be that, once you are in the location 24x7 for 3 weeks, and your job is to teach in the mornings and you have the afternoons free, it can make sense to build houses or put up windows in your free time. Especially because the vast majority of times the reason why football pitches arenāt created or the facilities arenāt improved is because the people managing the funds arenāt interested in it or donāt take a wider view despite the clear benefits of the action. In my case for example, the school director preferred us to give them the money directly (which they were planning to use to buy phones or laptops for the teachers) rather than us adding the windows (which could prevent the kids from catching frequent colds).
Volunteers in this case clearly appear net-positive: they invest time or money to provide value in ways the natives with power for decision and action wouldnāt be able to recognise. So thatās good. Even better perhaps would be if the volunteers identified a need (e.g. to add windows in classrooms), paid a local professional to do so competently, and the volunteers instead used their time to provide their non-replaceable skills by playing with the kids, giving classes or lectures, applying this outside view to spot opportunities for interventionā¦