UCL Effective Altruism exists to enable students at UCL to make a positive difference in the world, whether that's by pursuing a high-impact career that tackles a pressing global problem, or through donating to effective charities. We’re part of the Effective Altruism community – a research field that aims to find the best ways to help others, using evidence and careful reasoning. It’s also a movement of people who strive to take action on that basis, to make the biggest difference possible.
Additionally, we provide you with opportunities to accelerate your social, academic, and professional development, by hosting a wide variety of educational and social events. Our hackathons and research sprints allow our members to develop transferable skills and learn about how these can be applied in doing the most good, while our reputation attracts the most knowledgeable experts in various fields to give talks to our students on subjects like AI, biosecurity, global health, animal welfare, and much more!
We think one of the most important factors determining the expected social impact of your work is what issue you choose to focus on and there are lots to choose from, including climate change, improving institutions, technological development, global health, and so on. Given the great importance of this choice, we help you explore various cause areas in our intro fellowship programme.
If making a difference is important to you, joining a community can be one of the best ways to increase your impact. It can enable you to make lots of valuable connections, and additionally, you can achieve much more collectively by working together than you could individually. Besides this, getting involved with our society is a great way to meet like-minded people and have fun.