This year, after much procrastination in 2014, I saw in the New Year by taking the Try Giving pledge with Giving What We Can. I have pledged to give 5% of my income to effective charities throughout 2015. It was a big step for me but I can’t imagine ever looking back.
This is cross-posted from the Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) blog. ACE is a US-based charity dedicated to finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals. They do this by analysing research on methods of helping animals in order to provide research of interventions and top-charity recommendations.
In about 2011, feeding my insatiable need for podcasts, I came across a fascinating one by Toby Ord. He asked a question that caught my attention: if we want to make the biggest possible difference to the world, what is worth more: our time, or our money?
A recent survey reported in the Guardian can help us understand how we go about doing that.
The survey was carried out by the Charities Aid Foundation and appears to show that UK donors respond much more willingly to natural disasters than to war or conflict. This trend appears more prevalent amongst older donors than younger ones.
It might not be obvious at first glance, but this finding can shed useful light on how we attribute responsibility for problem solving.
On Sunday 22 February I am running the Brighton Half Marathon, raising funds for the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI). I’m combining my two passions, two journeys in one; fitness with effective altruism, a health journey with a...spiritual one?
I recently made the commitment to donate 10% of my pre-tax income to the most effective charities in combating extreme poverty, from now until I retire. It was something I’ve been considering for several years, but it was a big decision and not one I take lightly. Giving What We Can has shaped my opinions on charitable giving, altruism, and effective charities for nearly five years, and I wanted to share a little of my journey to finally Pledging.
Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) is an international medical and humanitarian organisation which “provides assistance to populations in distress, to victims of natural or man-made disasters and to victims of armed conflict.” (Activity Report 2013)
In the previous post in this series, I introduced the DALY and discussed two resolved issues: age-weighting and temporal discussion. In this post, I will look at the DALY and its role as a measure of disease burden that is transferable across different conditions and illnesses. I will also discuss the future of the DALY, its limitations as an indicator of resource allocation, and an additional method that could include community effects into the DALY.
Should we value the life of a 25 year-old more than that of a 65 year-old simply because they have different social roles? Should we discount future health benefits because it is uncertain whether they will arise or not? Should we think differently about the individual burden of a disease when a whole community is affected instead of just one individual?
In the first of this series for this year, we recap on Evidence Action’s activities in the last quarter of 2014.
In September, Evidence Action shared a video developed by South Pole Carbon, which provides a snapshot of the benefits reaped from the ‘Dispensers for Safe Water’ program in Uganda.
