The Nonlinear Library EA - A Thanksgiving gratitude post to EA by Joy Bittner
Nov 23, 2023
06:48
Welcome 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: A Thanksgiving gratitude post to EA, published by Joy Bittner on November 23, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Despite the complicated and imperfect origins of American Thanksgiving, what's worth preserving is the moment it offers for society to step back and count our blessings. And in this moment, I want to express my gratitude to the EA community.
It's been a hard year for EA, and many of us have felt increasing levels of disillusionment. Still, a huge thank you to each of you for being part of this messy, but beautiful family.
What I love about EA is that at our core, we are people who look around and see a world is world is messed up and kind of shitty. But also, when we see this mess, we deeply feel a moral responsibility to do something about it. And rather than falling into despair, we are optimistic enough to think we can actually do something about it.
This more than anything else is what I think makes this a special community, a group of people who still think we can work together to build a better world. More than anything else, thank you for that.
Transitioning from the general to the specific, I want to express gratitude to the EA community for enabling my work with Vida Plena, a mental health organization I founded in Ecuador. I am certain that without EA's support, Vida Plena would not exist.
As a backstory, Vida Plena had been an idea bouncing around in my head for a few years. Finally, due to the pandemic, I decided to give it a try. My plan was to burn through all my personal savings, hoping it would be enough to get us off the ground and attract the attention of some traditional international development organizations for long-term funding. It was a significant long shot, but the best I had.
Then came EA.
In 2021 I started working operations for the Happier Lives Institute, which was my first real baptism into EA. I told HLI from the start that my priority was going to be Vida Plena, and they still hired me- even giving me significant amounts of flexibility. This would never happen in the highly competitive traditional nonprofit world. But as Micheal Plant generously told me then: EA is about seeking the greatest impact, so if that is Vida Plena, they would be there for me for it.
Since then, the HLI team has continued to support me with research help, feedback, and much love (although to be clear, not money). Thank you especially to Samuel Dupret for countless hours on our predictive CEA and Barry Grimes for giving all the comms support. Peter, I so appreciate all our long walks and chats.
Then the broader EA community stepped up and supported this project financially. When Vida Plena was still just an idea in my head, two exceptional individuals I met at EAG London 2021 stepped up and promised me the funding needed to run our pilot.
This was the encouragement I needed to go from "I really think I want to do this" to "Well, now I have to do it." It's a very scary step to launch something new, but knowing that they believed in me enough to put their own money behind the idea was overwhelming. To these individuals, you know who you are - I can't express my gratitude enough. The fact that you trusted an almost stranger still deeply moves me.
And with that, I need to say thank you to everyone who put in so much work to organize EAG, and all the people who financed it to bring so many people together. I would have never met these angel donors if it wasn't for the CEA team and volunteers.
Next, I need to thank Joey Savoie and the whole Charity Entrepreneurship team. Although they rejected my application the first year (encouragement to keep trying for anyone else who's not made it), the next year they took a risk to include me and my co-founder, Anita Kaslin, in the Incubator Program with our outside-the-box idea. And you haven't stopped supportin...
Despite the complicated and imperfect origins of American Thanksgiving, what's worth preserving is the moment it offers for society to step back and count our blessings. And in this moment, I want to express my gratitude to the EA community.
It's been a hard year for EA, and many of us have felt increasing levels of disillusionment. Still, a huge thank you to each of you for being part of this messy, but beautiful family.
What I love about EA is that at our core, we are people who look around and see a world is world is messed up and kind of shitty. But also, when we see this mess, we deeply feel a moral responsibility to do something about it. And rather than falling into despair, we are optimistic enough to think we can actually do something about it.
This more than anything else is what I think makes this a special community, a group of people who still think we can work together to build a better world. More than anything else, thank you for that.
Transitioning from the general to the specific, I want to express gratitude to the EA community for enabling my work with Vida Plena, a mental health organization I founded in Ecuador. I am certain that without EA's support, Vida Plena would not exist.
As a backstory, Vida Plena had been an idea bouncing around in my head for a few years. Finally, due to the pandemic, I decided to give it a try. My plan was to burn through all my personal savings, hoping it would be enough to get us off the ground and attract the attention of some traditional international development organizations for long-term funding. It was a significant long shot, but the best I had.
Then came EA.
In 2021 I started working operations for the Happier Lives Institute, which was my first real baptism into EA. I told HLI from the start that my priority was going to be Vida Plena, and they still hired me- even giving me significant amounts of flexibility. This would never happen in the highly competitive traditional nonprofit world. But as Micheal Plant generously told me then: EA is about seeking the greatest impact, so if that is Vida Plena, they would be there for me for it.
Since then, the HLI team has continued to support me with research help, feedback, and much love (although to be clear, not money). Thank you especially to Samuel Dupret for countless hours on our predictive CEA and Barry Grimes for giving all the comms support. Peter, I so appreciate all our long walks and chats.
Then the broader EA community stepped up and supported this project financially. When Vida Plena was still just an idea in my head, two exceptional individuals I met at EAG London 2021 stepped up and promised me the funding needed to run our pilot.
This was the encouragement I needed to go from "I really think I want to do this" to "Well, now I have to do it." It's a very scary step to launch something new, but knowing that they believed in me enough to put their own money behind the idea was overwhelming. To these individuals, you know who you are - I can't express my gratitude enough. The fact that you trusted an almost stranger still deeply moves me.
And with that, I need to say thank you to everyone who put in so much work to organize EAG, and all the people who financed it to bring so many people together. I would have never met these angel donors if it wasn't for the CEA team and volunteers.
Next, I need to thank Joey Savoie and the whole Charity Entrepreneurship team. Although they rejected my application the first year (encouragement to keep trying for anyone else who's not made it), the next year they took a risk to include me and my co-founder, Anita Kaslin, in the Incubator Program with our outside-the-box idea. And you haven't stopped supportin...