The Asia Foundation, an international development organization, improves lives, expands opportunities, and helps societies flourish across a dynamic and developing Asia. With more than six decades of on-the-ground experience and local expertise, The Asia Foundation works across five overarching pillars: good governance, women’s empowerment and gender equality, environmental resilience and climate action, inclusive economic growth, and international cooperation.

We work with innovative leaders and communities to build effective institutions and advance pathbreaking reforms. Together with our partners, we are committed to Asia’s continued development as a peaceful, just, and thriving region of the world.

Headquartered in San Francisco, The Asia Foundation works through its network of offices in 18 Asia-Pacific countries and in Washington, DC.

Priorities as a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data

The Asia Foundation’s data for development work and priorities support efforts to unlock data for all and contribute to the harnessing of sustainable development data primarily through strengthening local and national data ecosystems to better leverage reliable, granular, and actionable data for evidence-based policies and reforms. Through engagement with partners in government, the private sector, and civil society, key activities include:

  • Embedding technological solutions within complex political landscapes, including around land rights, human rights, and gender-based violence.
  • Forging partnerships and convening networks and coalitions with global, regional, national, and local actors to find promising multi-stakeholder pathways to address locally relevant problems.
  • Strengthening capacities of knowledge sector institutions, including research institutes and think tanks, and promoting data-driven dialogue opportunities to explore the potential for more effective and inclusive public policy-making.

Key priorities include:

  • Innovative approaches to good governance centered around inclusivity and accountability
  • Open data ecosystems
  • Urban governance and safe and inclusive cities
  • Citizen-generated data or citizen voices
  • Migrant flows
  • Conflict
  • Digital divide and women’s access to opportunities

Across various country contexts, The Asia Foundation’s data-for-development initiatives are driven by local partners with the Asia Foundation’s support; address inequalities and seek to improve the lives of women and the most marginalized and vulnerable groups; and contribute evidence to policymakers with a view to make a broader and more sustainable impact toward the achievement of the SDGs.