Introducing EA to United World Colleges?

Hi everyone,

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we might bring Effective Altruism concepts to United World Colleges (UWC) a global network of high schools focused on intercultural understanding, peacebuilding, and sustainability.

For those unfamiliar: UWC schools bring together students (ages 16–19) from across the world to live and learn together, usually on scholarship. The mission is pretty idealistic,  “uniting people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future” , and the student culture reflects that. People come in asking big questions, such as, what does global citizenship mean in practice?

Which sounds... familiar.

As an alum of UWC Costa Rica, I’ve seen that many students really do want to make a difference, but the frameworks they’re given are sometimes vague or based on moral intuition. There’s plenty of passion, but not always the rigour or clarity that EA offers.

 I’m thinking along the lines of;

• Fellowships/workshops run by UWC alums who are now in EA,
• Integration of EA content into UWC’s existing social impact programming,
• Summer programs, essay contests, or funding for EA-related student projects,
• A soft bridge into university EA groups for UWC grads.

I would like to know:

• Has this been tried before? (I’ve seen bits of discussion on high school outreach, but not UWC specifically.)

If you’re a  UWC alum, someone working on EA outreach, I’d love to hear from you!