Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) is an international network of scholars, teachers, and students working to mobilize the resources of academia to help alleviate poverty.
Projects
ASAP is currently engaged in a range of efforts aimed at leveraging the resources of academia toward poverty alleviation around the world. Its network has been described as a group that “lies between academia and activism. Like the latter, it aims primarily at persuading and motivating people to change their behavior. Like the former, it does so by moral and political argument, using the distinctive skills of academics.” ASAP’s mission is to help scholars, teachers, and students enhance their impact on poverty. It does so by promoting collaboration among poverty-focused academics, by helping them share research on poverty with public audiences, policy makers, and NGOs, and by helping academics use their expertise to achieve an impact on global poverty through intervention projects. ASAP's strategic plan outlines the priorities of the global organization. ASAP's first global flagship project is Global Colleagues, a program that offers one-to-one matches of poverty researchers worldwide and in which all ASAP chapters are participating.
History
ASAP was founded by a group of nine academics in six countries with the mission of helping academics make a greater impact on global poverty. Those nine academics comprised ASAP’s original board of directors. The board developed the ASAP network by holding national launch conferences in the United States at Yale University, in the United Kingdom at the University of Birmingham, in Norway at the University of Oslo, and in India at the University of Delhi in 2011. In 2012, ASAP-Canada held a national launch conference in Toronto, Canada at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University).
Structure
The board includes leading academics from a variety of fields, all with a passionate interest in poverty alleviation. the current Management Board is composed of Thomas Pogge (President), Helen Yanacopulos (Fundraising Director), Catarina Tully (Co-Chapter Lead), Mihaita Lupu (Co-chapter Lead), Daniele Botti (Treasurer), and Michal Apollo (Communications Lead). Zeke Ngcobo has served as Global Coordinator since 2022.
Global Colleagues Program
ASAP has select global flagship programs that are sustained across national and regional chapters. One of ASAP's core flagship programs, Global Colleagues, brings together researchers at an early stage in their career and provides them opportunities for strong research networks, research resources, networking and grant/funding possibilities, and mentorship opportunities with more experienced researchers that are able to offer support to their colleagues in these areas.
Global Colleagues partnerships aim to foster collaborations between earlier career scholars based in the Global South with more experienced scholars in the Global South and North. The program seeks to address poverty’s more pressing issues in a globalized world. The partnerships are two-way collaborations where scholars in the earlier stages of their career and those more experienced researchers are enabled to learn from each other.
The one-on-one partnership takes place over the course of one year and involves both parties engaging in regular contact and continual progress assessments on the achievement of pre-agreed upon mutual goals. Usually partners within the program are matched with researchers with mutual interests and across international regions as well. During the duration of the partnership, the Global Colleagues team provides support to the matched colleagues to support their goals and outcomes.
Global Colleagues is run by a team of international volunteers (lead project manager: Robert Lepenies).
Prominent participants who have been part of the program include: Jayati Ghosh, Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, Adam Chmielewski, Clemens Sedmak, Alberto Cimadamore, Ernest Marie-Mbonda, Bina Agarwal, Marcos Nobre, Barbara Harriss-White, Shalini Randeria, Else Øyen, Gerry Mackie, Thomas Pogge, João Feres Júnior, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Sonia Bhalotra, David Hulme.