Tym 🔸
Bio
Participation6
Always happy to meet new people! This profile is open to messages from anyone.
Interested in:
Policymaking, Blogging, All of the Charity Entrepreneurship / AIM Initiatives
Previously:
Research Intern for
Campaign contractor for UK MP Candidate
EA Oxford Community Organiser
Head of Speakers for TedXOxford2024
1.5 Generation immigrant - extremely grateful for the opportunity to help others
Posts 1
Comments23
I'd be doing less good with my life if I hadn't heard of effective altruism
I've taken the 10% pledge and now donate to high-impact charities. My experiences at EAGs have also inspired me to regularly share career opportunities with others and make connections when I think it could benefit someone's career path.
This is neat! If you're taking feature ideas I'd suggest a button to hide/reveal the final recommendation because users may want to set the sliders in a way to get the outcome they want to see. Stopping and thinking carefully on what the value of each slider should be is harder when you see the number of the final decision float around on the side!
I wonder what are the most effective persuasion methods for charitable giving?
Donation choices are personal and potentially difficult to influence. Red Nose Day's website does have impact metrics so maybe they could be convinced:
"£20 could provide
- 80 meals at a UK community center
- 4 essential clothing items for a child
- 2 toiletry kits for a homeless youth
- 1 legal assistance package for a refugee family"
The forum previously discjssed redirecting foundation donations. Organizations like Effective Giving and Longview apparently do this work, but their involvement with fundraisers is unclear.
Yeah the quality of life in Poland is ahead of most of the world, and in most comparisons there's no equivalence in circumstances, The Poland vs developing economy GDP per capita differences range from ~10x (Nigeria) to 30x (Niger, CAR).
I re-examined my Syria example and I think many of the returnees could feasibly be individuals with very poor economic prospects in their host countries—specifically, those in the bottom quartiles of incomes in Lebanon, Iraq, or Jordan, which collectively host 1.6 million Syrians. Some of these individuals may have also lived in camps, which total 275,000 people (though these two figures overlap). For them and those who have left in the past few months of fighting, returning to Syria could offer an opportunity to start better lives and they are likely to be the bulk of the 1 million returnees in the first 6 months.
My argument for returns was more focused on the idea that if these developing countries experience economic booms, people might choose to return there, even if the countries are still somewhat poorer. But this would be a more long-term consideration, its hard to predict and brain-drains by definition make this less likely to happen. Nevertheless, this scenario seems particularly relevant to modern South American examples, like Guyana, about 50% of Guyanese people are part of the diaspora. If Guyana's recent economic boom is sustained, well-redistributed, and if the government manages to defend their borders, (big asks I know) it could potentially bring many Guyanese back.
All the numbers are quite rough.
It's a very thoughtful set of questions!
Firstly, I think you would be interested to know about Malengo which is a charity which is helping people in impoverished provinces in Uganda to enrol in German Universities and eventually settle there. They often seek out volunteers to mentor these propsective students, it's very rewarding.
Re brain-drain I have 4 thoughts.
TLDR they are
1) Lots of talent doesn't flourish in their home countries
2) Advocating for specific visa-pathways can give much more win-win opportunities for all involved
3) Many people go back to home countries when they have the choice/credible opportunity to do so
4) Moral argument, my strong passport is awesome, I have a right to have options as to where I live, others deserve it too
Long version:
1) Is it really a brain drain if talent would be counterfactually lost? For every ambitious underemployed dishwasher in the US theres likely many more people who were born in the wrong place, time and/or body/sexuality/religious family to ever have a fair opportunity to grow and make an impact. Often it's simply 'brain allocation' and the remittances sent home can have a greater impact than if the immigrant would have not found a good role in the home country.
2) Advocating for policies of specialised visa pathways can largely by win-win without brain draining effects. Let's say hyopthetical rich country has a shortage of nurses and a developing country has a over-supply in nursing graduates (rare scenario ik) / can really up the amount of trained nurses in a few years. A specialised visa-pathways can heavily benefit both countries.
3) Often people will come back when given the chance. About half if not most of Polish nationals in the UK have left the country after 2018, largely back to Poland despite the UK still having a much larger GDP per capita. The UN predicts 1 million Syrians will return in the first ~7 months after the end of the civil war, in 14 years 6.7 million left the country, that's quite a significant fraction for such a short amout of time. Many people want to be at their original home country in the long-term (Of course the UN prediction may be wrong). The perceived opportunities/ trajectories within countries as well as the cultural ties make people to come back.
4) There's a moral argument here. My entire life was determined by my parent's freedom to move freely with European Union borders. Many of there peers did not make the same choice and stayed in Poland. It's excellent that they had the right to make that choice. I believe people in developing states also should have that right, and its the responsibilities of Governments to give them reasons to stay.
A delightful thing happened a couple weeks ago, and it gives an example for why more people should comment on the forum.
My forum profile is pretty scarce, less than a dozen comments, most of them are along the lines of 'I appreciate the work done here!'. Nevertheless, because I have linked in some social media profiles and set my city in the directory, a student from a nearby university reached out to ask about career advice after finding me on the forum. I gave her a personalised briefing on the local policy space and explained the details of how to enter the UK civil service if she chose to do so.
Some internet activites are like little seeds that take no effort to plant but may lead to something nice, even months later.