EA - EA Philippines Needs Your Help! by zianbee

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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: EA Philippines Needs Your Help!, published by zianbee on March 21, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryIn light of the current funding constraints in the EA community, EA Philippines has had a difficult time securing the means to continue its usual operations for this year. This can mean less support for growing a highly engaged community of Filipino EAs.We are seeking USD 43,000 as our preferred funding for 1 year of operations and a 2-month buffer. The minimum amount of funding we are seeking would be USD 28,000 for 1 year of operations. This will help us with our staffing as well as being able to produce valuable projects (e.g. introductory fellowship for professionals, career planning program, EA groups resilience building, leadership retreat, etc.) and guidance to encourage, support, and excite people in their pursuit of doing good.You can help our community with a donation through our Manifund post. :)Outline of this postWhy donate to EA Philippines?What are EA Philippines' goals and how do we aim to achieve them?Who is on your team?What other funding is EA Philippines applying to?What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)Concluding thoughtsWhy Donate To EA PhilippinesTrack recordEA Philippines was founded in November 2018 by Kate Lupango, Nastassja "Tanya" Quijano, and Brian Tan. They made great progress in growing our community in2019 and2020, and the three of them received acommunity building grant (CBG) from CEA to work on growing the community from late 2020 until the end of 2021. Since then, EA PH has become one of the largest and most active groups among those in LMICs and Southeast Asia. The group has received grants from the EA Infrastructure Fund to fund us from20222023, withElmerei Cuevas serving as our Executive Director during this period.Since being founded, EA PH has:helped start three student chapters in the top three local universitiesorganized a successfulEAGxPhilippines conference being the 3rd most likely to be recommended among EAGs and EAGxshad over 300 different people complete an introductory EA fellowship of ours or our student chapters)had over 80 active members join EAG/EAGx conferences around the world including EAGxPhilippines (which also garnered 40 first-timer Filipinos)had 2 retreats for student organizer leadership and career planningmembers who have started promising EA projects (with a total of at least 14 EA-aligned organizations in the Philippines), such as the ones in the next section.However, EAIF's last grant to EA PH was only for 6 months (from April to September 2023), and they decided to just give the then team a 2-month exit grant rather than a renewal grant at the end of it. Due to the lack of secured funding, as well as wanting to rethink and redefine EA Philippines's strategic priorities,EA PH's board decided that it would be in the organization's best interest to explore new leadership to pursue its refined direction. The new leadership would then have to fundraise for their salaries and EA PH's operational expenses. The board led a public hiring round, and this led to them hiring us (Sam and Zian)[1] in late December to serve as interim co-directors of EA PH and to fundraise for EA PH.EA-Aligned Organizations in the Philippines: Case StudiesOver the last few years, several EA PH members have started cause-specific organizations, projects, and initiatives. Below we highlight someAnimal Empathy PhilippinesAnimal Empathy Philippines was founded by Kate Lupango (co-founder of EA Philippines), Ging Geronimo (former volunteer at EA Philippines), and Janaisa Baril (former Communications and Events Associate of EA Philippines). The organization started with community building and now focuses on bringing farmed animal issues in the Philippines ...