I wrote this brief to illuminate my reasoning behind advocating for StrongMinds as the choice of charity for Effective Altruism Glasgow’s annual fundraiser. In this brief, I will assume that supporting mental health interventions in the Global South is a cost-effective way to increase subjective wellbeing, and, for that matter, that subjective wellbeing is a good way of measuring things we find valuable. These questions are very tricky, and there is good discussion around the topic for example here. However, I will argue for a case that local group fundraising is still a worthwhile undertaking, even given the theoretic and practical uncertainties of the cause and charity.
Why is StrongMinds a good choice of a charity?
Strong Minds is a social enterprise which works on the cause of global mental health and happiness through therapy in the Global South, founded in 2013. On their website, they explain their motivation to focus on improving the mental health of African women such:
Since many African women cannot even begin to tackle issues like poverty and economic development until they overcome depression, StrongMinds has initially focused on treating women who suffer from this pervasive and debilitating mental illness. By adapting a proven therapeutic model, StrongMinds is the only organization scaling a cost-effective solution to the depression epidemic in Africa. We are guided by an ambitious and unique goal of treating two million depressed African women by 2025—enabling these women and their families to lead more healthy, productive and satisfying lives. StrongMinds presently operates in Uganda, a post-conflict and highly impoverished country, where 1 out of every 4 women suffers from depression.
The cost-effectiveness of this type of a community worker-led therapy intervention is not well researched, but depending on how much one values a life well lived versus a life saved, keeping in mind that comparisons between improving and saving lives is quite tricky, the cost for one DALY might be as low as US$650. As a local group, Effective Altruism Glasgow has successfully raised funds for GiveWell recommended charities, including the Against Malaria Foundation and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative in the past. Yet, we believe that reaching to cause areas that are not as well looked into while potentially important or, arguably, neglected in the community’s charitable actions has the following perks. Firstly, choosing this particular cause begs discussion around important concepts and conceptions around altruism and ethics, such as what we really value and what is a proven and useful proxy for measuring wellbeing. We, as a group, might have to look into the empirical and ethical dimensions of the extent to which economic wellbeing and reported subjective wellbeing are related, how poor mental health correlates or diverges from our intuitions regarding its badness to individuals or its prevalence as a suffering-problem in the world. This compels us to get versed in the discussion, hence builds our community and develops us as effective altruists.Secondly, in the case that further research and discourse around the cause of global mental health proves it to be less effective than our current guess, or, if Strong Minds becomes less transparent or impact-driven as now, our somewhat speculative support of the cause and the charity do not carry as much weight as might be the case if a larger organisation decided to dedicate a substantial amount of their efforts towards it. We want to, after GiveWell’s Chelsea Tabart, ’incentivise and celebrate early-stage, evidence-driven, transparent organizations like Strong Minds’ on this cause area.Thirdly, our fundraiser takes place on the university campus, where our objectives are twofold; raising funds for the cause and awareness of effective altruism. Associating with a cause which is already a locally appreciated topic, mental health, may give us the leverage of attracting a larger audience than if we had chosen a different charity.
Why fundraise at all?
This endnote serves as an argument to why our local Effective Altruism group decided to devote some of our time fundraising, rather than to other activities.There are many people interested in Effective Altruism on campus, and who want to learn more. Delegating the fundraiser to our new members has many benefits.First, it presents the fundraisers with a compelling reason to learn and read on Effective AltruismSecond, we want to try it as a way of community building – of bringing newcomers into our community.Third, there is a lot of delegation of tasks, hence low-effort for group organisersThere are also interests of visibility at play. Campus presence through a positive and topical campaign leaves a good mark about Effective Altruism as a tool to donating. I think that this sort of indirect outreach is not irrelevant, but rather creates the first notes on top of which people might later build their impression of Effective Altruism on. In short, presenting ourselves as amicable to future donors makes sense.
I welcome any further discussion at emiriiko@gmail.com. If you want to know more about Effective Altruism Glasgow, go to our Facebook, our website, or message us at effectivealtruismglasgow@gmail.com, and please, if you can spare some money for a cost-effective way to treat depression, donate to StrongMinds! You can find the link on our Facebook or in the description of this video.
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