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.
I’m really happy to see you asking this question and doing an investigation of a charity and a cause yourself. It makes intuitive sense to me that moving from a very dangerous place to a very safe one would have long term benefits to well-being and seems worth doing additional investigation on the intervention.
It’s hard to know how much risk people are facing and how much improvement people will experience by moving; migration has upsides (eg better economic opportunity) and downsides (eg isolation from family). I’m not an expert on either but would be excited to see you do any additional analysis on this that you can do and post about it.
I think an ideal version of the EA Forum would have a lot of people willing to help you analyze this issue and work out answers for yourself. Please don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a lot of feedback here though. The EA Forum has happened to develop into a place with a high concentration of people primarily interested in AI, biosecurity, and animal welfare. There are definitely people around with other interests but you might have to hunt around for them.
I have an update: Eden House was raided after the Trans Community asked Anne Ogborn / Trans Rescue to STOP posting photos of the people who lived in Eden House to the public internet. She went so far as to have the AP (Associated Press) film and interview neighbors. Almost a week later the Kenyan police raided Eden House.
It is illegal to be LGBTQIA+ in Kenya: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Kenya . The original safe house was supposed to be a temporary space before people got their immigration paperwork in order.
However, Anne Ogborn made it a ... (read more)