i get you now, and i agree. these feel-good activities are obviously not effective, but to me that also means that they don't have an impact either, unless you count making people feel good as impact. in other words i see impact and being effective as closely related. i guess my point was that the examples you used at first were not the kind of bad examples that you give now. at least to me.

i see having local impact as something very important. but i have not looked very closely at EA yet, and maybe EA does not consider that, i don't know.