EA - Top down interventions that could increase participation and impact of Low and Middle Income Countries in EA by AmAristizabal

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Top down interventions that could increase participation and impact of Low and Middle Income Countries in EA, published by AmAristizabal on December 19, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This is a Draft Amnesty Day draft. That means it’s not polished, it’s probably not up to my standards, the ideas are not thought out, and I haven’t checked everything. I was explicitly encouraged to post something unfinished! Commenting and feedback guidelines: I’m going with the default — please be nice. But constructive feedback is appreciated; please let me know what you think is wrong. Feedback on the structure of the argument is also appreciated.Posted on draft Amnesty Day, one day late oopsThanks to Ben Garfinkel, Surbhi Bharadwaj and Mo Putera for feedbackThis is a list of things that could help increase participation of LMICs in EA. Many of these actions involve tradeoffs (e.g. on people's time, efforts and resources) so probably the community shouldn’t do all of these things. Some of them might not currently be worth the trade-offs. However, since the community is serious about trying to increase diversity, and insofar as a number of these are actually pretty low cost, I think many of these might be worthwhile.See also this great post (has more specific suggestions that overlap with some of the ones highlighted here). This post has been drafted in parallel to this EA career guide for people in LMICs (which is a more bottom-up approach).Events:Strongly encourage senior EAs to attend events that are accessible to people in LMICs: Having virtual conferences and EAGxs in LMICs seems great, but for these events to be successful it is important for senior people in EA (who are still overrepresented in high income countries) to continue to attend them. As the number of annual EA events increases, senior EAs could start prioritizing conferences in their own hubs and it could become increasingly hard for people in LMICs to network with them. If senior EAs underestimate the importance of attending conferences that are accessible to people in LMICs, then personal outreach to these EAs could help them make better prioritisation decisions. There may also be ways to make participation in these events more convenient or attractive to senior EAs.Alternatively, making EAGs as inclusive as possible for LMICs. Some measures that could be done:Advertising events further in advance, considering that people from LMICs might struggle more with visa appointments (as already highlighted here).Provide immigration support like invitation letters for conferences and events and make the process smooth for LMICs attendees.Advertising events more broadly in LMICs by sharing events with local community builders, orgs and universities (even nudging community builders in LMICs to advertise an EAG seems low effort and worth doing).Consider hosting at least one annual EA Global in a more visa-friendly hub, instead of the UK and the US. For example, it could be worthwhile to host an EA Global in Mexico City or India (depending on visa requirements).For funders/EA orgs(probably too obvious) Diversifying demographics of staff working at funding organizations. This will come too from bottom-up approaches (community builders in LMICs could encourage EAs in LMICs to apply to jobs in these organizations).In the short term, these orgs could reach out more actively to community builders in LMICs when they have open positions.See more specific recommendations about hiring here.Shoutouts to very inclusive processes: someone could spot hiring and recruiting processes that have been particularly successful at attracting diverse candidates and share recommendations to replicate them. For example, we have heard that the last LPP Summer fellowship in Oxford had very diverse demographics. Apparently, they s...