How can you help?

You might think that to most help the world you should start volunteering, but in the long-run your main resource for improving the world is your 80,000 hour career. So, the way you can help the world most is to invest in your career; to increase the chance that you can effectively use it to work on the world’s most pressing problems. This looks like learning about the problems and the tools Effective Altruists tend to use to think about them; seeking advice from the wider Effective Altruism community; and thinking deeply about these tools for yourself. Effective Altruism Oxford is a community to support you in this process, starting with our introductory Arete Fellowship, or a chat with our director, Alex.

 but what if you want impact now?

In Effective Altruism, we talk a lot about opportunities that mean you might help more people in future, but I want to tell you about something you can do today that will have a certain and very large impact: donating.

There are different ways to donate; some like to donate in a 1-off capacity but I (Alex) really like Giving What We Can's 10% pledge as a way to feel part of a global community that's doing a substantial amount of good. Through pledging to donate 10% of my income, I expect to save around one human life a year. To me, that doesn't sound like much until I remember that this person has hopes, dreams and fears like I do.

What did I do to deserve this power? Just by being an 'ordinary' person living in a high income country puts me in the top 1-5% of earners, and the average oxford graduate is in the richest 1.6% globally. I think it's really unfair that we have power over life and death in this way, so I like to do what I can to make it more fair. 

p.s. We're partnering with Giving What We Can to improve your pledge experience, so please consider pledging through this link. Don’t worry, we’re not asking you to donate to us and we don’t take a cut!