Workshop «Nhập môn Thiện nguyện Hiệu quả»

   Effective altruism starts from a plain question: how do you spend your time and money so that helping others actually adds up to the most good. Hanoi closes the programme's autumn intake, making this the season's last chance at a course worked through in conversation inside a small group rather than from a lectern.

   The Vietnamese title means an introduction to effective altruism. The format is described as a mix of small-group discussion, hands-on exercises and frank talk without the usual academic distance. No background is required: the course is built for people meeting the approach for the first time.

   The essentials

• — effective thinking: where a helper's time and money actually go, and what the scout mindset means in practice
• — differences in impact: why some efforts help many times more than others, and how that scale gets estimated
• — impartial compassion: expected value, altruism without borders, and where animals sit in that picture
• — the long view, or longtermism: how the interests of future generations differ from today's problems
• — putting it to work: carrying the principles into your own life, job and career choices

   The programme is run by EA Vietnam, the Vietnamese community of the international effective altruism movement. Venue, materials and a light tea break are covered by the organisers. The form asks what stage you are at, from school and university through to careers of fifteen years and more, so the group comes out mixed in age and occupation.

   Places are few, fifteen for the weekend, and entry goes through an application: the form is reviewed and the invitation follows approval. The exact address goes only to confirmed participants; the sign-up page narrows it no further than Hoàn Kiếm, the central district. Questions about the programme go to [email protected].

   If you have been meaning to work out how considered giving differs from the impulsive kind, these two days hand you a usable framework and a circle of people to keep arguing it with.