The Reach Alliance – a student-driven global research initiative based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy – empowers students to “lead change for a sustainable and inclusive future,” writes Joseph Wong, U of T’s vice-president, international, and Reach Alliance founder, in an op-ed for Times Higher Education.
Upholding the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Reach Alliance brings together students with faculty mentors to investigate how organizations are delivering services to vulnerable populations around the globe that are the hardest to reach. Their findings have been published in leading academic journals and opinion outlets such as BMJ Global Health, the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, The Lancet and the Stanford Social Innovation Review, among others.
Since its launch in 2015, the program has partnered with universities around the world, including the University of Oxford and Mexico’s Tecnológico de Monterrey, and there are plans to expand to Asia, Africa and Australia, said Wong. “This scale-up will allow the global network of faculty and students involved in Reach to flourish, cultivating the next generation of principled, experienced and capable global leaders,” he writes.
