I stumbled across the charity Trans Rescue, which helps transgender people living in unsafe parts of the world move. They've published advice for people living in first world countries with worsening legal situations for trans people, but the vast majority of their funding goes toward helping people in Africa and the Middle East immigrate to safer countries (or for Kenyans, move to Trans Rescue's group home in the safest region of Kenya) and stay away from abusive families.
As of September 2022, their total funding since inception was just under 33k euros https://transrescue.org/where-does-the-money-go . They helped about twenty people move using this funding https://transrescue.org/some-things-weve-done/ . That puts the cost to help a person move at about 1,650 euros, which is in the same ballpark as a Givewell top charity's cost to save one person from fatal malaria.
I haven't looked closely at the likely outcome for people who would benefit from Trans Rescue's services but don't get help. Some would live and some would not, but I don't have a good sense of the relative numbers, or how to put QUALYs on undertaking a move such as this. Since they're very new and very small, I'm considering donating and keeping an eye on how they grow as an organization.
Mainly I hoped you all could help me by pointing out whether there's anything fishy that I might have missed. This review https://transrescuewatch.medium.com/the-trans-rescue-papers-when-help-looks-more-like-human-trafficking-exploitation-4e3d7886bfbc was published by a group of Twitter users, apparently after an argument with one of the board members. It's certainly not unbiased, but they do seem to have made a concerted effort to find anything bad or construable as bad that Trans Rescue has ever done. Trans Rescue wrote a blog post in response https://transrescue.org/responding-to-our-attackers . I came away with a sense that the board is new at running an organization like this, and they rely on imperfect volunteer labor to be able to move as many people as they do, but their work is overall helpful to their clients.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful and encouraging answer.
These are good things to think about. I'll see if I can find any research on migration in general. I get the sense most of Trans Rescue's clients didn't have good family relationships before moving, which does change the equation some, but it's a starting point for which research probably exists.
I'll try to post if I do any analysis that's worth posting. I'll also look deeper into EA forum and see if I can find advice for approaching small, young organizations like this. (On my to-do list is aski... (read more)