The Nonlinear Library EA - Is the Animal & Vegan Advocacy (AVA) Summit an EA Event? by Julia Reinelt
Dec 4, 2023
06:12
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: Is the Animal & Vegan Advocacy (AVA) Summit an EA Event?, published by Julia Reinelt on December 4, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
With the recent
announcement of the Centre for Effective Altruism on leaning into cause-specific conferences for some of their events, EAs working in farmed animal welfare or alternative protein lost an important event to network, hear about the latest research, and meet EA-minded funders.
Nevertheless and independent of the rest of this article, I want to take a brief moment to say how impressive it is to see the EA movement growing so much that there now is the need for (large!) specialized conferences.
We often get asked: "Is the AVA Summit an EA event?" and I would like to provide some answers and thoughts about that in this post.
First and foremost, the AVA Summit is an international conference series bringing together advocates focusing on systemic change for animals. The animal and vegan advocacy movement consists of people working on a wide range of strategies and approaches, but we all share a vision of a world where nonhuman animals, ultimately, are taken out of the food system and other human uses.
While the AVA Summit is not branded as an EA event, there are certain "EA lenses" that we frequently use in our assessments and work, such as the core principles around scalability, tractability, and neglectedness:
We emphasize topics relating to systemic change, e.g., changing corporate policy or legal protection.
We are committed to inspiring our participants to be as impactful as possible in the work they are doing for animals, which also means inspiring them to continuously reconsider, improve, and update.
We focus on farmed animals (including aquatic animals and insects), as well as on wild animals, suffering in large numbers.
To be very clear and transparent, I will add to points 1. and 2.:
Additionally, we welcome other tactics and strategies to be discussed in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Additionally, other areas of animal exploitation, like experimentation, do also have a place at the AVA Summit.
Who attends the AVA Summit?
Our attendees are dedicated individuals working or looking to work in the animal and vegan advocacy movement professionally. 80% of our attendees are full-time advocates.
Lewis Bollard, Farm Animal Welfare Program Director at Open Philanthropy, said about the inaugural AVA Summit that it was "the event with the highest number of serious-minded people in the movement". We strive to achieve this high standard with all of our events.
Our events are also substantially more international than any other similar event: At the last Summit in the US, we welcomed more than 750 attendees from 47 different countries.
People at AVA have a multitude of motivations, including animal welfare, animal rights, environmental, social justice, effective altruism, public health, and they also join from other intersecting movements. A lot of attendees at AVA are EA-aligned without necessarily calling themselves "Effective Altruists".
What are the biggest advantages of going to the AVA Summit?
Having conversations that are directly related to your work in animal advocacy and learning about actionable strategies, as well as benefiting from lessons and collaborations in EA-adjacent movements.
Finding hidden counterfactual talent in a different pool of potential applicants, and networking with a highly diverse and highly international audience.
Meeting with a large number of farmed animal funders, as well as nonprofits. At the last Summit in the US, 215 organizations working directly in the movement were represented (not counting universities, companies, etc.).
What is the program at the AVA Summit like?
Like I mentioned before, we support various strategies and tactics for advancing our shared vision: From grassroots ac...
With the recent
announcement of the Centre for Effective Altruism on leaning into cause-specific conferences for some of their events, EAs working in farmed animal welfare or alternative protein lost an important event to network, hear about the latest research, and meet EA-minded funders.
Nevertheless and independent of the rest of this article, I want to take a brief moment to say how impressive it is to see the EA movement growing so much that there now is the need for (large!) specialized conferences.
We often get asked: "Is the AVA Summit an EA event?" and I would like to provide some answers and thoughts about that in this post.
First and foremost, the AVA Summit is an international conference series bringing together advocates focusing on systemic change for animals. The animal and vegan advocacy movement consists of people working on a wide range of strategies and approaches, but we all share a vision of a world where nonhuman animals, ultimately, are taken out of the food system and other human uses.
While the AVA Summit is not branded as an EA event, there are certain "EA lenses" that we frequently use in our assessments and work, such as the core principles around scalability, tractability, and neglectedness:
We emphasize topics relating to systemic change, e.g., changing corporate policy or legal protection.
We are committed to inspiring our participants to be as impactful as possible in the work they are doing for animals, which also means inspiring them to continuously reconsider, improve, and update.
We focus on farmed animals (including aquatic animals and insects), as well as on wild animals, suffering in large numbers.
To be very clear and transparent, I will add to points 1. and 2.:
Additionally, we welcome other tactics and strategies to be discussed in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Additionally, other areas of animal exploitation, like experimentation, do also have a place at the AVA Summit.
Who attends the AVA Summit?
Our attendees are dedicated individuals working or looking to work in the animal and vegan advocacy movement professionally. 80% of our attendees are full-time advocates.
Lewis Bollard, Farm Animal Welfare Program Director at Open Philanthropy, said about the inaugural AVA Summit that it was "the event with the highest number of serious-minded people in the movement". We strive to achieve this high standard with all of our events.
Our events are also substantially more international than any other similar event: At the last Summit in the US, we welcomed more than 750 attendees from 47 different countries.
People at AVA have a multitude of motivations, including animal welfare, animal rights, environmental, social justice, effective altruism, public health, and they also join from other intersecting movements. A lot of attendees at AVA are EA-aligned without necessarily calling themselves "Effective Altruists".
What are the biggest advantages of going to the AVA Summit?
Having conversations that are directly related to your work in animal advocacy and learning about actionable strategies, as well as benefiting from lessons and collaborations in EA-adjacent movements.
Finding hidden counterfactual talent in a different pool of potential applicants, and networking with a highly diverse and highly international audience.
Meeting with a large number of farmed animal funders, as well as nonprofits. At the last Summit in the US, 215 organizations working directly in the movement were represented (not counting universities, companies, etc.).
What is the program at the AVA Summit like?
Like I mentioned before, we support various strategies and tactics for advancing our shared vision: From grassroots ac...