Asia is brilliantly alive and well with vibrant ideas, cultural expressivity, and social imagination. This is reflected in the variety of its intellectuals, many of whom, happily, are actively supported by the Asian Public Intellectual Fellowship Program.

Public Intellectuals are academics, researchers, media professionals, artists, creative writers, NGO activists, social workers, and public servants who work for the betterment of society by applying their professional knowledge, wisdom, and experience in their everyday lives.

The Nippon Foundation, in cooperation with major academic institutions in Asia, set up the API Fellowship Program to meet the shared challenges of the times. More than ever before, today's challenges require clear thought and appropriate action that transcend national boundaries. As Asia moves into the 21st century the API program provides an active forum to invite the best minds of Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand to share their visions and ideas for mutual regional cooperation and development.

API fellowships help stimulate this development of public intellectuals at many crucial and creative levels. For example, with API program support, vital disaster management information from Thailand and Japan was shared with the region in order to deal with and prepare more effectively for natural disasters following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia a few years ago.

On another level, regional public intellectuals actively support each other in regard to human rights and freedom of expression. Artistically, API provides the stimulus for a variety of creative programs, such as a project in the Philippines to train 25,000 new animation artists over the next five years, or support for a Japanese contemporary artist who is blending dances from around Asia into a new "Asian dance."

The API Fellowship Program encourages these projects, and the on-going abundant growth and development of positive new thinking over a wide range of social, cultural, economic, and academic issues in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan.

The selection process for API fellowships takes place every year with the cooperation of affiliated universities and the Nippon Foundation, identifying the most promising and creative thinkers in these countries. Another advantage of this program is that it supports regional meetings at which former and present fellowship holders meet to share their experiences and ideas - a further stimulus to increase regional cooperation and understanding among the best minds available.