Previous director of EA Finland for 3+ years.
MSc Student in Sustainable Entrepreneurship at Aalto Business School (Finland).
Personal project in 2025: writing about effective giving in Finnish to give a spark for change in the long run.
Pet peeve: For posts relevant to the US only, state it. Preferably in the title.
I actually did something similar: a 1-month internship in Kigoma, Tanzania, for an EA-inspired for-profit. I paid all costs apart from housing. I also think being an EA group organiser made it easy for them to take me. (Unfortunately?) I learned that it was not a great personal fit for me, but it was still a good experience, and I think the founders appreciated my contribution.
In retrospect and purely from an impact perspective, I guess that it would have been more impactful if I had donated the equivalent cost of my flight tickets and vaccines to them. With that money, my botec says that they could maybe have gotten 3-6x more than the value I produced, by hiring East African students for a total of 3-6 months worth of internships. If the money didnāt come from my pocket but from the university, like it did for Annika, that wouldnāt have been a counterfactual.
In retrospect, from a not-impact perspective, Iām happy I did the internship. I gained a lot from it.
For context, I live in Finland.
Iāve noticed local role models in your community are important in addition to the big-name leaders that you mentioned. Iām a community builder in Finland, and members of our community have often said that seeing and talking to people from the same country who do impressive stuff has helped them be more ambitious in their careers or even consider that they can have an impact instead of just being passive observers of EA.
PS. Hereās a list of past Forum posts related to EA Finland in chronological-ish order.
Thank you for the clarification Nicole!
Sounds like a great event! To give comparable stats for more similar events to the EA North than the international EAG conference, here are some stats from two events by EA Finland
- 3-day event with sleepover.
ā 32 attendees. (57% first-time retreat attendees.)
- Likelihood to recommend 8.9/ā10
- Shallow connections[1]: Avg: 6.6
- Deeper connections[2]: Avg: 5.2
Total costs excluding employee costs: 3,775ā¬ (3,214 GBP). Including employee costs: 4,275ā¬
Total cost per participant: 134ā¬
Cost per participant after participation fees: 76ā¬ (=65 GBP)
Cost per deeper connection[3]: 14,6ā¬ (=12,5 GBP). Same range as EA Northās 11 GBP
A 1-day event with 13 25-minute presentations by community members on any topic loosely related to EA. Topics included:
How I use AI tools to live a better life,
No Summer job? Want to do something together?
My projects on AI control: LLMs Schelling coordination & training monitors
Mental health as a global health problemāand what philosophers can do about it
From combustion engines to climate change science. My EA Journey
My EA journey and thoughts on career advising
Some stats:
21 attendees. (5 firstcomers.)
āHow likely would you join a similar event in 6 months if organisedā Avg 4.7/ā5
Feeling welcome and included: 8.6/ā10
Qualitative feedback:
Most often mentioned value received (in open field) was
Social needs (6/ā12)
Getting to know people better (6/ā12)
Learning new things/ā new ideas (4)
A couple also mentioned getting feedback to their projects and increased motivation
Cost:
Total costs: 790ā¬ (290ā¬ food costs + ~500ā¬ employee salary costs)
Cost per attendee: 38ā¬/āparticipant (=32 GBP)
Cost per connection is hard to count based on the feedback gathered.
āHow many people did you have a 5+ minute discussion with for the first time?ā
āHow many, if any, people that you didnāt know well before the retreat would you now be comfortable asking a favor from?(e.g., someone who might reach out for collaboration, connect you to a job opportunity, etc.)ā
Excluding participation fee, including employee cost.
If we apply for funding after June 1st, how likely is it that we can get a response from the EA infrastructure fund by mid-August if we state that need in the application?
In the post āFunds and CEA are mergingā, it was said:
EA Funds will be accepting and evaluating grant applications throughout the merger and spinout process, so you can continue to submit applications. [ā¦] Grant requests submitted to EA Funds after 9 May will not be processed until at least 1 August.ā
Because it says that the applications will be evaluated continuously, I had interpreted āprocessingā to mean the due diligence and payout, not evaluation. But in this post, I get the impression that the pause is more comprehensive because of
We likely wonāt evaluate all applications by 1 June, but we will prioritize time-sensitive and promising applications and aim to complete evaluations for those before the pause
I strongly believe that cultivating a habit of giving, even with small amounts, helps build a long-term culture of altruism
I strongly agree with this! Before I had a stable income, Iād set aside 1ā¬ a month to a separate bank account for charity. Usually, Iād wait a year or more to donate the accumulated money somewhere. (For context, Iām from Northern Europe.)
Nice idea! Iāll share this with the Finnish EA community to ask if someone wants to volunteer.
Thank you for continuing to share these! I likely would have donated less to the AWF if you didnāt share public reports.
Did you see GWWCās 2025 strategy post?
(1) Iām also a bit confused about the difference between charitable projects and hosted funds. First, I thought it means itās not possible to donate to funds via GWWC website, but after reading it again, I interpreted it as a change happening rather back-end and wonāt impact recommendations. Instead, it would be a change in the oversight GWWC promises for the funds. Have I understood it correctly?
I just found that Sebastian Schwiecker had written a blog post on the same topic.
Because of
I was hoping there were good EA blog posts on this topic, but after spending a while with EA Forum search and Google I didnāt find any.
ā¦ Iām leaving this link here :) https://āāeffektiv-spenden.org/āāblog/āāwie-viel-soll-ich-spenden/āā
Congrats on making a brave strategic change!
Iām wondering how you changed from Assiettes VĆ©gĆ©tales to Anima. Was it just a name change to better reflect the new strategy or a merger to Anima International (if itās also called that in non-profits)?
Fair enough! Thanks for sharing this perspective as well. I guess that a rights-based animal charity evaluator would focus more on making change through legislation and litigation, failing to notice other approaches to improve animal welfare. However, there could be something that the current approach of EA orgs is missing more easily, which the rights-based lens would include.
Thank you! Looks like what I was looking for :)
So, to summarize:
- Some animal rights activists have impractical attitudes (for creating change effectively, such as not using non-violent communication) and alienating attitudes towards non-rights-based interventions to improve animal welfare. You find value in promoting other approaches than that.
- You find good arguments for welfarist tradition.
- On the other hand, being against animal rights doesnāt cling right and talking for animal rights can be a good shortcut.
- You believe there is an overlap with welfarist and rights-based ethical theories that should be appreciated.
Did I understand you right?
Thanks for the response! I didnāt first think of different moral value systems which obviously have an impact on how people view the issue of animal suffering and well-being. I still think a ārightsā mindset can be a valuable extension of utilitarianism, for implementing the change we want to happen on an institutional/ālegislative level to improve animal welfare. I also think it is easier to imagine personhood for non-human animals when using a rights-based approach. They are not just beings that events are happening to, but individuals for whom the ability to live a full life using their capabilities is instrumental for their well-being. And there talking about rights can be useful. Thatās how Iād quickly sum up how I think about it :)
Here are my drafts:
Personal reflections on leading a national EA group for 3+ years. Iāll aim to publish this during the draft amnesty week, but I might also chicken out.
A post encouraging people to donate to effective giving organisations and comparing their multiplier effects, need for funding/ā ability to use the money for growth and which charities/ā cause areas get the boost if you donate to different meta charities. E.g., I expect donations to effektiv Spenden to result mainly in more donations for climate, but if you donate to Gi Effektivt, it only boosts GiveWell charities (not counting second-order effects of people getting into EA through these orgs). Anyone wanna work on this with me? Or steal the idea from me? :)
[Edit: I wonāt share my reflections yet.]