Apply Now | Application deadline: Sunday 20 September | Runs 5 Oct – 15 Nov 2026
A 6-week project sprint for people building high-impact careers in global health
Run jointly by Effective Altruism South Africa, Effective Altruism Nigeria, and Health Progress Hub.
Finish something. Six weeks, one real problem, a mentor who knows the field, and a publicised piece of work with your name on it that anyone can read.
🎯 At a Glance
Duration | 6 weeks of project work, 5 October – 15 November 2026 |
Time commitment | 5–15 hours per week |
Format | Fully remote |
Who can apply | Anyone interested in a high-impact global health career. Students and professionals are welcome. No prior experience needed. |
Work alone or in a team | Teams of 2–6 are the default; strong solo projects are also accepted |
Mentor | Every project gets one, matched by topic, with weekly check-ins |
Application deadline | Friday 18 September 2026 |
Cost | Free to participate |
What you get | You leave having completed a project, and it is shared publicly on our platforms. You receive mentorship, feedback and a certificate. |
Questions |
💭 What is this?
This project sprint is designed to support you complete a project with real-world impact.
- You pick a problem, work it for six weeks with a team and the guidance of a mentor, and produce something finished that gets publicised under your name.
- You end up with a final piece of work you can add to your track record, which a hiring manager, funder, or programme lead can read, providing evidence to support your career development.
- You create resources and tools the whole global health community can use, reference, or expand on, to support impactful work to save and improve lives.
🛤️ Choose your track
Track A — pick from the menu | Track B — propose your own | |
What it is | Choose one idea from the pre-scoped project options | Bring your own project idea |
Who it suits | Most people. The scoping work is done; you get straight to the work | People with a problem they already know well, usually from their own country or job |
What you submit | The application form | The application form, which asks for more information about your project idea |
Track B’s seven extra requirements
If you propose your own project, we're asking you to establish what the menu options already have established: that the work is worth doing and can be done. Specifically:
- Problem & Core Question: Define the specific issue you’re tackling and the primary question your project will answer.
- The Impact Case: Explain why this matters, why meaningful progress can be made on it in a few weeks, and why it is overlooked by others.
- Deliverable Specifications: Describe the final product in detail—including its length, file format, and where it will be stored or publicised.
- Target User: Identify who would actually use this output and what action they would take with it.
- Data & Methodology: Outline your approach, adding a quick note whether the data exists and how you'll access it within the project timeline.
- Team & Ownership: List team members and clear responsibilities for each person.
- Timeline: Provide a week-by-week roadmap with clear milestones across the six-week period.
If your Track B proposal isn't accepted, you can still join Track A - just indicate your interest in your application.
🚀 Why do this
- You'll strengthen your understanding of high-impact global health efforts. A project allows you to take theory - counterfactuals, DALYs, cost-effectiveness, evidence - and apply it. It deepens your understanding of key ideas needed for work that truly maximises the impact of the limited resources available to us.
- You'll have a finished project to add to your track record that separates you from candidates with similar CVs and supports your career development.
- It's the cheapest way to gather information about whether you’re a good fit for this kind of work - for yourself. There are many cheap tests you can do to explore career options, including starting with reading about a field, then talking to people in it, then doing a short project, then committing to something long and expensive like graduate study. six weeks is a much cheaper test than a master's degree, and it's worth doing for the learning you do about yourself.
- It provides structure you can't easily build alone. A submission deadline, a mentor to review your work weekly. Written feedback against a success rubric, a team, or an accountability buddy to work with.
📋 The project menu (Track A)
Each project is pre-scoped. Full descriptions — deliverable, milestones, mentor profile — are in the project menu document. Below is a summary:
# | Main project theme | Sub theme | Description |
1 | Market Shaping | Anatomy of a Broken Supply Chain | Traces why specific essential medicines chronically stock out — mapping every actor from API manufacturer to health facility and finding where the chain breaks and why. |
2 | Market Shaping Frameworks Repository | Collects the public frameworks organisations use to decide when and how to intervene in a broken medicines market, plus publicised analyses of deals actually made — annotating each: what question it answers, what inputs it needs, where it has been applied | |
3 | Health Financing and Reform Case Studies | Earmarks after passage | Reconstructs how a country passed and kept a tax earmarked for health — who pushed it, the sequence of decisions, who resisted, and whether the money actually reached health budgets |
4 | Procurement reforms | Reconstructs how a country changed the way it buys medicines or health services — the reform's design, who carried it, the resistance, and what changed in practice | |
5 | Donor transitions | Reconstructs how a country replaced departing donor money — Gavi or Global Fund graduation, PEPFAR drawdown — with domestic financing: what was promised, what was budgeted, what actually got paid | |
6 | Pilots that Scaled | Pilots That Scaled | Builds a register of health pilots that reached national adoption — and matched non-adoptions — then reconstructs a subset as short case briefs: what carried the pilot to scale or didn't |
7 | Medicine Registration and Guideline Lag | Medicine Registration Gap | For each medicine, finds two dates — first stringent approval or WHO pre-qualification, and first appearance on a country's national medicines register — and records the gap between them |
8 | The Medicine Guideline Clock | Tracks how quickly countries adopt WHO treatment recommendations into national guidelines—using WHO policy tables as the baseline date and official national documents as proof of adoption. | |
9 | Community Health Workers | Who decides what CHWs do | For 3 countries, documents which institution actually sets the CHW task list, how tasks get added or removed, and what evidence each task has behind it |
10 | How CHWs got paid | Traces, country by country, how Community Health Worker cohorts moved from volunteer status to salaried — the dated decisions, budget lines, and who paid at each step | |
11 | Digital and AI Tools for Community Health Workers | Inventories both waves of digital/mHealth Community Health Worker tools, their current status, and scores each against conditions for surviving past pilot stage | |
12 | Environmental Determinants | Mapping Africa's Air Quality — The Air Monitoring Census | For ~20 African countries, records whether a legal PM2.5 standard exists and whether any regulatory-grade government monitor is actually operating — including what changed after US embassy monitors stopped publishing in March 2025 |
13 | Blood-Lead Surveillance Gaps — Where the Numbers Are | For African countries, records whether representative blood-lead data exists — and for countries without it, which upcoming DHS/MICS survey round could carry a blood-lead module | |
14 | The Laws That Worked | For laws that measurably reduced a health harm, reconstructs how enforcement actually happened — who acted, what changed on the ground, what the before/after evidence shows — against an evidence standard stated up front |
📖 How the six weeks work
You'll meet your mentor weekly for 45–60 minutes. Every session has something due to help you deliver your project at submission deadline.
Week | Key Milestone | Description |
1 | Project plan confirmation | You develop a research question along with a deliverable specification that outlines the expected length, format, required sections, and task ownership for each team member. |
2 | Check in | Project work, mentor check-in |
3 | Mid-point review | A mid-program review to assess whether projects are on track, should descope, or redirect if needed. |
4 | Check in | Project work, mentor check-in |
5 | Draft submitted | Draft with every section present is due |
6 | Final edits & Submission | Final feedback and edits. Submission and project sign-off. |
After submission, projects are assessed, and participants with high-quality are invited to present a showcase, and will have their projects publicised.
Participants are expected to send your work to your mentor 24 hours before each session. This gives your mentor time to review it, and allows you to make the most of your meeting time with them.
🚧 What's in scope
Projects include a focus on research, advocacy, and scoping — and that includes real contact with the world, which is often what makes a project good rather than academic. Stakeholder engagement sessions, interviews with officials and practitioners, surveys of professionals, co-design workshops, and feasibility scoping with a host organisation are all encouraged, and need no extra process.
What's out of scope is implementation with real populations: anything involving patients, minors, or people in crisis; collecting personal health data; offering health advice, screening or referral; distributing anything; or community pilots that create a service expectation. Anything needing ethics or regulatory clearance you can't obtain inside six weeks is also out.
If your project sits somewhere in between — collecting data from members of the public, say, or a small non-clinical pilot inside an organisation's own operations — flag it in your application. It may well be fine, but it needs a named accountable person at the host organisation, mentor sign-off on the design, a consent and data-handling plan compliant with POPIA or NDPR, and a plan for what happens at the end.
✅ What "finished" means
Level | Label | What it looks like |
1 | Emerging | Deliverable is incomplete or difficult to understand for an external audience. Outputs are surface-level, lack methodology detail, or fail to address the core problem, offering limited value to stakeholders working in the focus area. |
2 | Developing | Deliverable addresses the topic but contains key gaps in analysis or presentation. The output is partially complete or relies on unverified assumptions, making it difficult for an external organisation to directly use for decisions or programs without significant rework. |
3 | Accomplished | Deliverable is high quality, complete, and clearly structured for an external audience. The methodology is applied thoroughly, and the output provides clear, actionable value that practitioners in the focus area can immediately use for program or policy decisions. (Minimum standard for publication) |
4 | Exemplary | Meets all Level 3 criteria, with exceptional rigour, clarity, and presentation. Demonstrates direct real-world utility, such as active interest or engagement from a partner organisation, a clear adoption path, or analytical insights that significantly advance the focus area's work. |
5 | Outstanding | Meets all Level 4 criteria and achieves tangible external adoption or immediate real-world implementation. The output serves as a high-impact, decision-ready asset already being integrated into programs or informing active strategy by relevant sector partners. |
Work that meets the publication standard goes live on the Effective Altruism South Africa, Effective Altruism Nigeria, or Health Progress Hub platforms with your name on it. Work that doesn't get the required score receives written feedback and an explanation.
Certificates
Participants are awarded certificates if you actively contribute to your project every week, submit by the deadline, and reach level 2 or above.
🚫 What this is not
We'd rather be clear now than have you disappointed in December. This is:
- Not a job. No role, internship, or introduction is guaranteed.
- Not funded for participants. No funding or stipends are provided.
- Not implementation experience. See the scope section.
- Not a qualification. It produces evidence, not credentials.
- Not a promise anyone adopts your work. What we do promise: all three organisations read every finished deliverable and respond in writing, and work meeting the bar gets publicised with your name on it.
📅 Key dates
Date | Milestone |
Early September | Project phase announced for participants and mentors; menu publicised |
11 & 14 Sept | Office hours with the organisers for candidates to ask any questions |
Sun 20 Sept | Track A+B applications due |
Mon 21- Wed 30 Sept | Proposals reviewed; teams confirmed; mentors assigned |
Wed 30 Sept - Fri 2 Oct | Kickoff call |
Mon 5 Oct | Project work begins (week 1) |
Sun 25 Oct | Mid program review checkpoint |
Wk of 26 - 31 Oct | Midpoint review feedback and decisions |
Sun 8 Nov | Draft due |
Sun 15 Nov | Final deliverable due |
Mon 16 - 22 Nov | Project assessment |
Wed 18 Nov | Review deadline for the showcase |
Thurs 19 Nov | Showcase invitations |
Wed 25 Nov | Virtual showcase, 17:00–19:00 GMT+2, recorded |
End Nov | Certificates issued |
❓ FAQ
Do I need any work or study experience? No. Alumni of the Global Health Introductory Fellowship and the Introduction to Effective Altruism Program are especially well placed, but the sprint is open to anyone interested in high-impact global health work.
I don't have a team. Can I still apply? Yes. You can apply to be matched with a team, or to do a project solo. Solo participants be paired with another solo participant for peer accountability.
Is solo actually harder? It is different. You lose the benefits of having a team, so a bad week hurts more. But you don’t need to coordinate or wait on anyone. Solo proposals are held to a tighter scope so that they remain feasible in the six weeks.
Can I propose my own project on my own? Yes. Track B is open to solo applicants. You just have to make sure you propose a project you can realistically complete in the six weeks.
How much time will this really take? 5–15 hours a week, but you are welcome to commit more time if you can!
What if I fall behind? Let your mentor know ASAP. In the worst case, you can choose to descope the project. A smaller project finished well scores better than an ambitious one abandoned.
Do I need a partner organisation? No, and you're not expected to find one. Your project is complete as publicised piece of work. We’ll share them on our platforms so that they’re easier for organisations to find.
Will the project definitely be publicised? If it meets the bar, yes. If it doesn't, you get the score, the written feedback, and if you meed the requirement, a certificate.
How competitive is it? We expect more applications than places. The strongest applications show a realistic scope, and a clear case that the problem matters, is neglected and is addressable within the six weeks.
I've never done research before. Neither have most applicants. Some projects are more difficult than others. Review the project brief and choose something that you think is achievable. Your mentor and team will support you achieve this.
☀️ About the three organisations
Effective Altruism South Africa
Supports people to maximise the impact of their resources and careers, through capacity-building programmes, career advising, and community. Since 2024: 160+ programme completions, ~24 high-impact roles accepted, ~5 high-impact initiatives launched.
Website Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Youtube Mailing list
Email: hello@effectivealtruism.co.za
Effective Altruism Nigeria
Builds and supports the community of people in Nigeria working on the world's most pressing problems.
Website Facebook LinkedIn Email: info@eanigeria.org
Health Progress Hub
Works on research and advocacy for global health progress, with a focus on neglected problems and African contexts.
Website LinkedIn Substack Email: info@healthprogresshub.org
✍️ How to apply
Apply Now | Application deadline: Friday 18 September | Runs 5 Oct – 15 Nov 2026
One form for both tracks.
For Track B, it asks for: the problem and your core question; the case for why it matters, why it's unsolved, and why a small unbudgeted team can move it in six weeks; the deliverable in concrete detail (length, format, where it lives); your target user and what they'd do with it; your method data sources with a note on access; team members and who owns what; and a week-by-week timeline.
Around 45 minutes for Track A, longer for Track B.
Not sure whether to apply? Apply. Come to an office hours session first if it helps. We'd rather help you work out whether it's a fit than have you rule yourself out.
Questions: hello@effectivealtruism.co.za or info@eanigeria.org