The very first time I ever stepped foot on the UC Berkeley campus, I noticed flyers plastering the walls of every building. Among the myriad flyers—ones promoting a business frat, ones promoting an ASUC candidate and ones with that week’s Superb events— one particular flyer caught my eye. Outside the walls of FSM Cafe, read “#GlobalPov” in bright green. The flyer offered information on the Global Poverty and Practice minor on campus. After a few info. sessions and the opportunity to understand poverty on a global level, I was sold. I declared Global Poverty and Practice as my minor. But, who was behind the development of such a large scale project to make an impact on global poverty? Less than 10 years old, the GPP minor is the fasted growing minor on campus, in such a short amount of time. Who launched this wildly successful minor? None other than Ananya Roy.
A professor on campus with equal passion for microfinance and poverty as she is a fan of Bono, Ananya Roy founded the minor through the Blum Center for Developing Economies. Professor Roy has taught to over 4,000 students in her class on poverty and inequality. You may have seen the current project she’s heading, #GlobalPov, which works to heighten the conversation around poverty through twitter and intensely artful YouTube videos.
In addition to her highly celebrated work in the minor, Professor Roy was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor UC Berkeley bestows on its faculty and the Distinguished Faculty Mentors award in 2006. She was also the recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching award, the only teaching award given by the student body in 2008, was the 2009 California Professor of the Year by CASE/Carnegie Foundation, and most recently, she received the 2011 Excellence in Achievement Award of the California Alumni Association, a lifetime achievement recognition. With two published books, Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development, and City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty, Professor Roy embodies the liberal essence of Berkeley with some serious well-articulated swag.
To check out the thought-provoking #GlobalPov projects on YouTube, visit https://www.youtube.com/user/GlobalPOV
Picture Source: http://www.microdinero.com/files/noticias/4047_AnanyaRoy_libroInterior.jpg
http://iaste.berkeley.edu/iaste/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2012/09/IMG_0…
http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Ananya-TED-1.jpg