PAF: Training Change-makers

By Daniel Gastfriend, Mattie Toma, Nicholas Elledge, and Andy Ran-Kit Chan.

This is the Executive Summary of the final report from a Philanthropy Advisory Fellowship project to advance education in universities about Effective Altruism and how to solve the world's biggest problems. The full report is available here. This research was conducted on behalf of PAF client Schmidt Futures.
 

Executive Summary

What can universities do to empower student change-makers to address major global challenges?

In this report, we develop the outline of a program that can deliver tools to students change-makers through different channels, including:

  • Academics
  • Student Clubs
  • Professional Programs
  • Competitions
  • Volunteering and Service

We describe students' journeys through the program and considers methods for scaling the program up.

We consider tools that can be given to change-makers to make them more
focused and effective, including:

  • Reasoning skills
  • Networks
  • Efficacy skills
  • Practical experience

The report describes the channels that are best suited to provide these tools to change-makers.

We propose that students “minor” in a global problem to gain a broad, multi-disciplinary understanding of that issue as well as major global challenges such as climate change, antibiotic resistance, factory farming, biosecurity, etc. 

In addition to these recommendations, the report includes a detailed curriculum for a course on Effective Altruism. 

The full report is available here.

PAF ReportsHarvard College Effective AltruismEducation