EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM TORONTO, AKA EATO, IS BOTH AN ORGANIZATION AND A COMMUNITY
The Organization
We are a registered Canadian not-for-profit corporation that exists to carry out strategic goals in line with our vision, values, mission, and the wider pursuit of effective altruism.
Vision
Our vision is an optimal world. This is purposefully nonspecific. There are many different factors to make the future as good as possible, many of which aren’t currently understood. We aim to help the world become more able to collectively work on problems.
Values
Five principles form the basis of our values and culture: commitment to others, scientific mindset, openness, integrity, collaborative spirit.
Mission
Our mission is to empower Torontonians to most effectively apply their skills, talents, and resources to do good for others and for the world.
Activities
We provide services such as events, one-on-one meetings, and online tools, most of which can be found through our Get Involved page.
Head to this link to see some of the photos from our events and events that our members have attended.
The Community
EATO is a community of people who are willing to help one another and collectively work towards a better world. Our members are from all walks of life and have a wide range of personal beliefs – what unites us is our desire to be as effective as possible in how we do good.
To support your altruistic goals, we:
- Host a variety of events designed to teach new skills, improve understanding of causes and solutions, and enable you to make better altruistic decisions.
- Offer support throughout your personal moral journey, and friendship with like-minded people through community connections and one-on-one meetings.
Whether you’re just beginning to discover effective altruism or have known about it for a while, we’re here to help. Join us in doing good better, and have fun along the way!
Community Membership
Membership with the EATO community is informal, spanning across a range of levels of engagement and corresponding labels: from audience, people who are simply aware of EATO, to leadership, people who are actively coordinating and leading EA organizations.
Join one of our community groups and stay active as a member by attending at least one meeting every 3 months, intentionally connecting with someone who you met through EATO every 3 months, or taking on other options to get involved.
For more detailed definitions of membership, see CEA’s Concentric Circles Model.
For a nerdy and more deeply reflective take on membership, see a work in progress document on the norms of dedicated, aspiring EAs at bit.ly/EATOnorms.
Open Planning & Archive documents
Our community was founded by and continues to be run by active, dedicated community members. We encourage every member to get informed about our community’s history and current status so that every member can choose to have their say in how the community is run.
Group Planning & Meta-Meetings Active Archive bit.ly/EATOplanning (quarterly, open meetings)
Meeting Notes Archive bit.ly/EATOnotes (basic data from nearly all of our events)
EATO Public Google Drive Folder (a bounty of strategy, planning, and event resources)
2020 EATO Year Calendar Doc link (see our core event offerings, at a glance)
Event Development Schedule bit.ly/EATOschedule (old guide to scheduling events)
Suggest Event Ideas & See Past Ideas bit.ly/EATObox (a someday-maybe list of event ideas)
EA Toronto – General Report – Looking Back at 2019
EA Toronto – Retrospective Report 2018
Brief History of our Toronto community
2012 – Giles Edkins starts “The High Impact Network – Toronto”, holding the first set of meetups with proto-EA content in Toronto.
2016 – Liav Koren starts the “Toronto Effective Altruism Meetup” group and runs monthly meetings at the Fox and Fiddle by Yonge, on Wellesley.
2018 – Colin Bested starts community building work for EATO with grant support from the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA).
2020 ~ EATO begins the process to incorporate as a not-for-profit
For a richer history of our EATO community, dig through the group planning archive
Read more on the history of Effective Altruism
