I am writing this to reflect on my experience interning with the Fish Welfare Initiative, and to provide my thoughts on why more students looking to build EA experience should do something similar.
Back in October, I cold-emailed the Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) with my resume and a short cover letter expressing interest in an unpaid in-person internship in the summer of 2025. I figured I had a better chance of getting an internship by building my own door than competing with hundreds of others to squeeze through an existing door, and the opportunity to travel to India carried strong appeal. Haven, the Executive Director of FWI, set up a call with me that mostly consisted of him listing all the challenges of living in rural India — 110° F temperatures, electricity outages, lack of entertainment… When I didn’t seem deterred, he offered me an internship.
I stayed with FWI for one month. By rotating through the different teams, I completed a wide range of tasks:
* Made ~20 visits to fish farms
* Wrote a recommendation on next steps for FWI’s stunning project
* Conducted data analysis in Python on the efficacy of the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture’s corrective actions
* Received training in water quality testing methods
* Created charts in Tableau for a webinar presentation
* Brainstormed and implemented office improvements
I wasn’t able to drive myself around in India, so I rode on the back of a coworker’s motorbike to commute. FWI provided me with my own bedroom in a company-owned flat. Sometimes Haven and I would cook together at the residence, talking for hours over a chopping board and our metal plates about war, family, or effective altruism. Other times I would eat at restaurants or street food booths with my Indian coworkers. Excluding flights, I spent less than $100 USD in total. I covered all costs, including international transportation, through the Summer in South Asia Fellowship, which provides funding for University of Michigan under
In my understanding "Cause X" is something we almost take for granted today, but that people in the future will see as a moral catastrophe (similarly as to how we see slavery today, versus how people in the past saw it). So it has a bit more nuance than just being a "new cause area that is competitive with the existing EA cause areas in terms of impact-per-dollar".
I think there are many candidates seeming to be overlooked by the majority of society. You could also argue that no one of these is a real Cause X due to the fact that they are still recognised as problems by a large number of people. But this could be just the baseline of "recognition"a neglected moral problem will start from in a very interconnected world like ours. Here what comes to my mind:
Cause areas that I think don't fit the definition above:
But who is working on finding Cause X? I believe you could argue that every organisation devoted to finding new potential cause areas is. You could probably argue that moral philosophers, or even just thoughtful people, have a chance of recognising it. I'm not sure if there is a project or organisation devoted specifically to this task, but judging from the other answers here, probably not.
Open Philanthropy, Give Well, Rethink Priorities probably qualify. To clarify: my phrase didn't mean "devoted exclusively to finding new potential cause areas".