About Us
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Our goal is to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice.
Who we are
Effective Altruism Heidelberg is a university group that brings together people who are passionate about using evidence and careful reasoning to maximize our positive impact on the world. Our core organizing team currently consists of six students from Heidelberg University who coordinate our activities and events.
What we do
Our group hosts weekly meetings that alternate between:
Events: Discussions and presentations on effective altruism principles, cause prioritization, evidence-based interventions, and emerging global challenges
Social Gatherings: Relaxed meetups where like-minded individuals can connect, share ideas, and build community in a casual setting
We also organize an Intro Program to learn about fundamentals of Effective Altruism and members can attend national retreats and international conferences to network with the wider Effective Altruism community.
Our approach
We're guided by the core principles of effective altruism:
Using evidence and reason to determine how to do the most good
Being willing to follow arguments where they lead us
Maintaining an open and inclusive community where diverse perspectives are valued
Committing to putting our ideas into practice
Cause Areas
Previous EA research has identified a couple of global problem fields as particularly promising for doing something about. Those which are particularly
large scale,
neglected (= not too crowded, potentially low-hanging fruit left)
and tractable (= likely solvable even with modest effort).
Currently, the most prominent problem fields (“Cause Areas”) in the EA community are:
Global Health & Wellbeing
Animal Welfare
Global Catastrophic Risks (e.g. risks from nuclear weapons, pandemics or AI)
The community is always looking for new avenues to do good and so they also have identified promising but neglected solutions in otherwise less neglected areas such as:
Climate Change
Welcome!
Whether you're already familiar with effective altruism or simply curious about how to make your efforts to improve the world more effective, we welcome you to join our community. No prior knowledge is required—just an open mind and a desire to make a positive difference.
Come to our next meeting or event to learn more!
Do you want to talk to one of our organizers to get to know us better?
Let’s chat if you are curious about EA, what we do and who we are. If you’d like, you can get to know us this way before joining our events.
Books!
We’ve got a collection of books on how to do good better and on some of the worlds most pressing problems. You can borrow them at one of our meetings. :)
