Workshop «Nhập môn Thiện nguyện Hiệu quả»

   Effective altruism begins from one working question: how to spend your time and money so that helping others actually adds up to the most good. Ho Chi Minh City opens the programme's autumn intake, hosting the first of its three city weekends, 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 Ho Chi Minh City address is given only to confirmed participants, which is why the sign-up page does not show it. 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.