Step Up Managing consultant Michael Canares was one of the 45 scholars invited to attend a 21-day intensive training on Development and Inequality in June 2011, and the only scholar from the Philippines to attend the institute. Another Filipino, Mr. Roderrick Galam was in the institute but is currently based in the UK pursuing his doctoral studies in Sociology. The fellowship was made possible with the generous support from Sovereign Bank, Banco Santander and Brown University. The scholars were trained at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, with prominent authors Patrick Heller, Richard Snyder, Daniel Smith, and Gianpaoulo Baiocchi as convenors. Speakers from the World Bank, Harvard University, School of Oriental and African Studies, and coming from different disciplines as economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, among others, lectured at the institute.