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: This chart is right. Most interventions don't do much. (Cameroon experience), published by EffectiveHelp - Cameroon on August 16, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

This chart is so right. The local charity environment in Cameroon is probably helping much less people than you imagine. We ran an effectiveness contest that aligns with this research perfectly.

In 2021 we created an EA group in Cameroon. We had multiple seminars covering the basics of Effective Altruism. By the end of 2022, the group got so excited that we created a charity.

"We" are a group of humanitarian/development workers in Cameroon, all currently employed in this field of work. Some of the basic EA principles resonated a lot. Such as the feeling that some activities and projects don't really help much and that somewhere, sometimes, there is "real impact".

So we created this charity to help steer organizations towards real impact, and help them become "more effective". We tried a couple of things:

We offered consultancy services, starting for free, to local charities.

We started a contest to find the best projects in Cameroon.

The first thing did not work. See footnote. [1] [1]

Now about the contest, we think this is relevant to share. The contest helped us confirm this global analysis, some things just work miles away from others, and some organizations are dedicated to things that aren't very useful. We wish there was a nicer way of saying it.

We had 21 submissions in the first year. We designed a simple way to evaluate and compare projects: We divided into 3 categories (health, human rights, and economic) and took all organizations' reports at face value. Based on their own data, there was a huge divide between top performers and lowest performers. Then we did field surveys to verify the claimed results of the top 6 and we had our 3 winners, with only one organization really meeting expectations.

Main finding:

There was no correlation between experience and effect or grant size and effect, it is as if organizations don't get more effective with experience and professionalism. If anything the correlation is negative. We think this is because organizations get more effective at capturing donor funding not at providing a better service. They only get real valuable feedback from donors who decide to fund them or not.

So organizations will focus and implement projects based on what donors appear to want, which sometimes may be connected to the most meaningful effects on the people they serve, but not necessarily.

Details:

First, we had two organizations just applying for funding instead of presenting project results. This happens, just a reminder that it is all about donor funding in the end and that sometimes people don't read.

The general tendency was that organizations follow donor trends and work to teach people things they probably already know:

Multiple menstrual health projects translated into a tiny economic transfer (free pads to cover 2 or 3 months) and some lessons either girls already know or they were very likely to be about to find out.

"Child Protection" is another hot term, particularly in humanitarian contexts, but it was not very clear what people were being taught about and how that helped anyone.

Sexual reproductive health was also very common but products are available and cheap and it is unlikely the information is that new to Cameroonian girls and women right now. HIV rates in the target areas aren't as high as in other countries, and when we ran the numbers it was unlikely even one infection was averted with these projects.

"inclusion" of persons with disability in the health sector was a beautiful project with multiple complex activities but had no visible effects on people, with disabilities or not. It involved mostly training health workers, but it is important to unders...