Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

by Tareq
1 min read 2

32

Career choiceCommunityGlobal health & developmentCareer advising
Frontpage

Hello EA Community,

I'm seeking advice and support during a challenging phase in my career and life. My name is Tareq, and my journey has been shaped by growing up in Syria during the conflict. Despite the unimaginable turmoil and risks, I completed a degree in dentistry and worked in various capacities in peacebuilding and health, which, as you probably know, are crucial in the Syrian context.

In 2022, I was determined to expand my impact by pursuing an MSc in Global Health, Social Justice, and Public Policy at King's College London.
However, as a Syrian, securing sponsorship for my education was extremely difficult. Even platforms like GoFundMe were not accessible, but with perseverance and the generosity of many, I successfully crowdfunded my education through an alternative platform. I also overcame significant visa challenges to arrive in the UK and proudly completed my degree in early 2024.

Despite these achievements, I now find myself at a crossroads. My current visa allows me to stay in the UK for a bit until I find employment, but securing a job that offers visa sponsorship has proven to be extremely difficult.

I recently attended two EA events in London, where I was inspired by the exchange of ideas and the passion for impactful work. I enjoyed these experiences and would love to continue contributing to this community. I am posting here in the forum based on the recommendations of a couple of fellow EAs.

I would greatly appreciate any advice, connections, or recommendations you might have that will help me navigate through the job market. I am mainly looking for opportunities within Global Health, Conflict, Development and Policy in London, but I'm open to other sectors and moving to other destinations. I have a wide range of experiences and skills powered by academic degrees and over 80 online courses I finished in Syria. I am also a TEDx speaker and have been lecturing at UK and global universities occasionally.

For more context on my background, I am more than happy to jump on a quick call to discuss further.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story, and I look forward to any guidance or support you can provide.

Tareq
 
 

32

0
0
1

Reactions

0
0
1
Comments2


Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
mhendric🔸3
0
0

Are you familiar with Probably Good and their 1on1 career advising? This seems like a natural fit!

Reply
Tareq1
0
0
1

I am not, but will check it right away. Thanks a lot for sharing!

Reply
Curated and popular this week
 ·  · 38m read
 · 
In recent months, the CEOs of leading AI companies have grown increasingly confident about rapid progress: * OpenAI's Sam Altman: Shifted from saying in November "the rate of progress continues" to declaring in January "we are now confident we know how to build AGI" * Anthropic's Dario Amodei: Stated in January "I'm more confident than I've ever been that we're close to powerful capabilities... in the next 2-3 years" * Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis: Changed from "as soon as 10 years" in autumn to "probably three to five years away" by January. What explains the shift? Is it just hype? Or could we really have Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)[1] by 2028? In this article, I look at what's driven recent progress, estimate how far those drivers can continue, and explain why they're likely to continue for at least four more years. In particular, while in 2024 progress in LLM chatbots seemed to slow, a new approach started to work: teaching the models to reason using reinforcement learning. In just a year, this let them surpass human PhDs at answering difficult scientific reasoning questions, and achieve expert-level performance on one-hour coding tasks. We don't know how capable AGI will become, but extrapolating the recent rate of progress suggests that, by 2028, we could reach AI models with beyond-human reasoning abilities, expert-level knowledge in every domain, and that can autonomously complete multi-week projects, and progress would likely continue from there.  On this set of software engineering & computer use tasks, in 2020 AI was only able to do tasks that would typically take a human expert a couple of seconds. By 2024, that had risen to almost an hour. If the trend continues, by 2028 it'll reach several weeks.  No longer mere chatbots, these 'agent' models might soon satisfy many people's definitions of AGI — roughly, AI systems that match human performance at most knowledge work (see definition in footnote). This means that, while the compa
 ·  · 4m read
 · 
SUMMARY:  ALLFED is launching an emergency appeal on the EA Forum due to a serious funding shortfall. Without new support, ALLFED will be forced to cut half our budget in the coming months, drastically reducing our capacity to help build global food system resilience for catastrophic scenarios like nuclear winter, a severe pandemic, or infrastructure breakdown. ALLFED is seeking $800,000 over the course of 2025 to sustain its team, continue policy-relevant research, and move forward with pilot projects that could save lives in a catastrophe. As funding priorities shift toward AI safety, we believe resilient food solutions remain a highly cost-effective way to protect the future. If you’re able to support or share this appeal, please visit allfed.info/donate. Donate to ALLFED FULL ARTICLE: I (David Denkenberger) am writing alongside two of my team-mates, as ALLFED’s co-founder, to ask for your support. This is the first time in Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disaster’s (ALLFED’s) 8 year existence that we have reached out on the EA Forum with a direct funding appeal outside of Marginal Funding Week/our annual updates. I am doing so because ALLFED’s funding situation is serious, and because so much of ALLFED’s progress to date has been made possible through the support, feedback, and collaboration of the EA community.  Read our funding appeal At ALLFED, we are deeply grateful to all our supporters, including the Survival and Flourishing Fund, which has provided the majority of our funding for years. At the end of 2024, we learned we would be receiving far less support than expected due to a shift in SFF’s strategic priorities toward AI safety. Without additional funding, ALLFED will need to shrink. I believe the marginal cost effectiveness for improving the future and saving lives of resilience is competitive with AI Safety, even if timelines are short, because of potential AI-induced catastrophes. That is why we are asking people to donate to this emergency appeal
 ·  · 17m read
 · 
TL;DR Exactly one year after receiving our seed funding upon completion of the Charity Entrepreneurship program, we (Miri and Evan) look back on our first year of operations, discuss our plans for the future, and launch our fundraising for our Year 2 budget. Family Planning could be one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available. Reducing unintended pregnancies lowers maternal mortality, decreases rates of unsafe abortions, and reduces maternal morbidity. Increasing the interval between births lowers under-five mortality. Allowing women to control their reproductive health leads to improved education and a significant increase in their income. Many excellent organisations have laid out the case for Family Planning, most recently GiveWell.[1] In many low and middle income countries, many women who want to delay or prevent their next pregnancy can not access contraceptives due to poor supply chains and high costs. Access to Medicines Initiative (AMI) was incubated by Ambitious Impact’s Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program in 2024 with the goal of increasing the availability of contraceptives and other essential medicines.[2] The Problem Maternal mortality is a serious problem in Nigeria. Globally, almost 28.5% of all maternal deaths occur in Nigeria. This is driven by Nigeria’s staggeringly high maternal mortality rate of 1,047 deaths per 100,000 live births, the third highest in the world. To illustrate the magnitude, for the U.K., this number is 8 deaths per 100,000 live births.   While there are many contributing factors, 29% of pregnancies in Nigeria are unintended. 6 out of 10 women of reproductive age in Nigeria have an unmet need for contraception, and fulfilling these needs would likely prevent almost 11,000 maternal deaths per year. Additionally, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that every dollar spent on contraceptive services beyond the current level would reduce the cost of pregnancy-related and newborn care by three do
Recent opportunities in Career choice
92
E2G help available
Will Kirkpatrick
· · 3m read
3
3
45
The CEA Events Team is Hiring for Three Program Lead Positions
OllieBase
· · 3m read
0
0
151
Projects I'd like to see in the GHW meta space
Melanie Basnak🔸
· · 8m read
3
3
View more