<aside> 🎯 Thriving toward being the best version of our community

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Introduction

Overview

“We” is used to refer to EA Switzerland’s executive team.

We believe community health is essential, and no space created for communities should prevent anyone from having positive experiences. Anything short of adequately providing that space would be a failure in caring for our fellow humans, and a great obstacle in achieving our goals as a community. This is a guide for EA Switzerland organizers to help them build that space with community members. In this Community Health Guide, we:

• Describe our goals, and what a healthy community means to us;
• Define the values that we want to shape our community culture; and
• Outline our plan by:
  • Detailing the actions aimed at fostering our desired culture,
  • Specifying the means by which we thrive for (early) detection of weaknesses in our plan and execution,
  • Laying out the different processes in place to tackle issues, and
  • Indicating how we plan to monitor progress

Additionally, we have internal policies for our staff, board members, and advisors.

Impact

We believe that if we steer that boat properly and adequately, the long-term impact can be immense.

On one hand, we care immensely for the well-being, both physical and mental, of every living being. EA Switzerland is a space that we manage and in which our community members evolve. This gives us some amount of control over their experiences. Being successful in providing positive experiences in that portion of life is already an invaluable reward.

Additionally, we believe that great undertakings can only be achieved with a healthy community. As we aim to navigate the question of doing the most good, it is crucial that the space in which we do it is carefully and thoughtfully crafted for supporting the community adequately.

Our Values

We believe the community’s culture is crucial to its impact, so we wanted to outline the values we care about the most.

• Compassion
  • We feel the current and potential suffering in the world, and we take it seriously.
  • We are grateful for having the opportunity to make a difference. We strive to leverage our privilege.
• Agency
  • We realize the incredible position we are in, and we have the courage to take action to get the most out of it.
  • We are driven by our vision of a much better world. We are ambitious in our goals, and aim for exceptional impact.
• Truth-seeking
  • We strive to be scouts. We are open to being wrong, and we are considerate of others’ points of view—even in disagreements.
  • We look for the best opportunities to do good and aim to question our assumptions and conclusions to better reach our ultimate goal.
• Solidarity
  • We help each other. We are motivated to seek help and give it in return to go further, together.
  • We demonstrate empathy toward each other. We believe kindness and compassion are essential behaviors for any community.
• Independence
  • We are aligned with the values of the Effective Altruism movement, but that does not prevent us from being an independent community that works to act on what its members believe is the most impactful.
  • We seek feedback from stakeholders outside of our community, always aiming for continuous improvement

Our Goals

We want community members to be able to access the best experiences possible, every step of the way. It drives our desire to carefully cater to the social and humane needs along each and everyone’s journey in our community.