Comments
Hello,
,I would like to know more about how these Impact Hubs work, what is expected from the participants, time dedication etc? I am interested in one of them, in Porto but i would like to more about how they work.
Thank you,
Fernanda.
Hello,
,I would like to know more about how these Impact Hubs work, what is expected from the participants, time dedication etc? I am interested in one of them, in Porto but i would like to more about how they work.
Thank you,
Fernanda.
Hi Fernanda! We don't have set requirements for participants. However, we'd love if people took part in coworking or group activities at least every once in a while, to keep the connection to the rest of the Hub. Everyone who wants to contribute more can take on volunteer tasks like organising activities or looking for housing. Hope to see you there!
Ok, great! Thank you for the reply and feedback.
Following our recent poll, we have decided on the locations of the next three EA Impact Hubs: They will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria from 13 July to 27 August; in Porto, Portugal from 28 August to 10 October; and in Chiang Mai, Thailand from 11 October to (at least) 11 December 2026. Apply to join any of the Hubs here.
Impact Hubs are affordable, temporary coworking and coliving setups for EAs and impact-focused people. The idea is to make it easier to do focused work and build connections with other EAs without having to be in an expensive EA hub like London or SF. Nobody has to pay or gets paid, and there is no mandatory schedule; many participants work or study remotely on weekdays and take part in volunteer-organised community activities in the evenings and on weekends. We've been running our first Impact Hub in Da Nang, Vietnam with 25 total participants since February and it's gone very well. People especially liked the affordability, coliving structure, EA group culture, scheduled and spontaneous group activities, coworking ease, and potential to make new friends fast. See here for a short and here for a slightly longer review of what Da Nang has been like.
The hubs are aimed at anyone doing or planning to do impact-focused work who wants to spend some time living and working alongside others who care about doing good thoughtfully. In Da Nang, we have had people working in cause areas like animal welfare, s-risks, AI safety, mental health, and longtermism, while others worked on personal projects or were upskilling or exploring career changes. See some of their profiles here.
In our recent poll, we asked people to vote for which locations they'd be likely to join if a hub took place there, and where they could see themselves staying long-term if things went well (informed by the compiled city information and ranking mechanism on cities.moiri.dev). We received 27 responses, you can see the results for short-term and long-term interest here.
Overall, the wider community showed a significant interest in Southeast Asia, while the inner community (people who joined the Da Nang Hub) showed more interest in European cities. Taking all the information from the poll and the prefrences of the organising group as well as seasonal changes like climate and air quality into account, we have made the decision to start with two of the most favoured cities in Europe based on the Da Nang cohort's preferences for potential long-term locations to try out, followed by a hub in the winner of the overall vote, Chiang Mai. Many of the organisers are looking for a place to settle for 12+ months and might start a more permanent hub in one of the locations if they like them enough, starting 2027.
Some of the reasons people voted for these cities in particular:
If you're thinking about joining any of the three hubs, please apply here for Sofia, Porto, and Chiang Mai)! You don't need to be certain that you'll actually come, and you can join for only part of any hub if you like (no need to apply if you only plan to come for a few days or you already live there). The application is more a formality rather than a rigorous evaluation, to get to know the people who might join and make sure they have at least a basic understanding of EA; we don't expect to reject many applicants. We will keep reviewing all applications, even on short notice during the hubs.
To coordinate with others (e.g. on housing), be informed about future hubs, and connect with other interested people, please join the Impact Hubs Discord. Feel free to ask questions there or here in the comments.
Hello. Thanks for sharing. Yesterday I created a WhatsApp group for people interested in effective altruism in Porto. It is under the WhatsApp community Effective Altruism and Rationality Portugal, where I just shared the post above.
You may want to add deadlines for submitting the application forms, and consider having a single form for all applications (where people can specify the location they are interested in).
Hi Vasco, thanks for the initiative! Hopefully we can get some locals to partake in the hub, and I assume there'll be engagement with the Lisbon crowd too.
We deliberately decided not to put deadlines on the applications since we don't want to turn interested people away only because they found out too late. And the application forms have been combined since shortly after we published this post, perhaps you were looking at an old version?
Thanks, Jan. Yes, I was looking into an older version of the form.