Chris Evans
| Photo Credit: Andy Kropa
Marvel star Chris Evans will receive a Spirit of Service Award with his A Starting Point (ASP) partners Mark Kassen and Joe Kiani. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the honour is given by the Washington-based nonprofit organisation Partnership for Public Service.
Evans and his business partners on ASP, the video-based civic engagement platform, will be conferred with the award during the nonprofit’s Samuel J Heyman Service to America Medals award ceremony, scheduled to take place on September 11 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
The annual event is designed to honour “outstanding career federal employees for their achievements and contributions to the public good” but the Spirit of Service Award is an outlier as it “recognizes individuals outside government whose work is critical to the goal of a better government and a stronger democracy”.
In a joint statement, Evans and Kassen, a filmmaker, and Kiani, a technology entrepreneur, expressed gratitude to the Partnership for Public Service for the award. They are “so proud” of the talented team at the company, which was founded in 2020.
“We created ASP to encourage civic engagement and make it accessible for everyone, so we are truly humbled for ASP to receive this recognition alongside so many incredible federal employees who share the same goal within the government,” they said.
Previous recipients of the award include former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Ford Foundation’s Darren Walker and former PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff.