Build AI tools for the animal movement
- format
- Creative project, product design, and entrepreneurship
- topic
- AI tools to empower advocates
- open to mentee proposals
- Yes, with the right mentee
Who I'm looking for
A core aspect of my role at Vegan Hacktivists is that cultivating the AI builder talent ecosystem for the animal movement. I am looking to mentor someone who wants to explore a potential career in building AI powered tools for animal protection organisations. I hope to identify promising up and coming builders who I can then potentially recommend to other organisations for paid work. Applicants should proactive and laser-focused on building tools that will be used by real organisations in real campaigns rather than building flashy projects that nobody asked for. A well designed Claude Skill.md that solves a concrete problem for someone in the movement and sees real adoption is superior to a full stack app that no one uses. I am more interested in product sense and intuitions about user experience than raw technical ability. Applicants should already have experience using the following LLM features:
- Memory files
- skill.md files
- Connectors Applicants should have a paid plan (the ~$20 one is fine) for at least one of the following (or similar)
- ChatGPT/Codex
- Claude
- A vibe coding tool like Replit, Bolt, Lovable
- Cursor
- An automations platform: Make.com, N8N, Zapier
Alternatively to the above, I'd love to mentor someone to develop animal movement specific AI education content for the movement, so if you want to make a webinar or workshop teaching some aspect of AI I'd love to mentor that.
Questions for applicants
What signs suggest to you that your project would get used by animal advocates?
Support offered
- Shaping direction
- Connections to potential users of your tool
- Domain expertise, and the potential for paid builder/educator work if you are impressive (cannot guarantee)
- Note I will not be able to contribute to the building, only give you direction on what to build
Thomas Manandhar-Richardson
Vegan Hacktivists
I am the AI Impact Director at Vegan Hacktivists, where my team and I provide pro bono AI consulting and automation services to the animal protection movement. I also create and teach free AI courses open to the entire animal movement under Amplify for Animals Prior to that I conducted social science and data science projects for animal orgs at Bryant Research as their research director. I have also done paid AI consulting work with many organisations in the movement. Prior to that i was a data scientist outside the movement building AI solutions for a variety of companies including Nike.