Publications – Weaving a Fabric of Unity

“The story of FUNDAEC in Colombia is one of the most inspiring educational processes of the 20th century and is vitally important today. Every student of development economics should read this book.” Nava Ashraf, Professor of Economics,
London School of Economics

About the book

Weaving a Fabric of Unity shares the story of the pioneering enterprise that came to be identified as FUNDAEC (the Foundation for the Application and Teaching of Science), highlighting five decades of stories, learning and insight from key individuals central to shaping its evolution. The book outlines Fundaec’s unique conceptual and methodological approach, which is focused on the releasing of human potentialities and the integration of theory and practice, and brings the reader on the journey of how the organization created one of Latin America’s most innovative curriculum in rural development. It shares how Fundaec’s focus on raising up individuals and communities dedicated to the promotion of community wellbeing supported its efforts to organically scale over the last few decades, reaching hundreds of thousands of students across Colombia and being adopted in over a dozen countries to support diverse populations working towards the collective realization of a dignified future.

Extracts from the book

Read extracts from three chapters of Weaving a Fabric of Unity.

“Weaving a Fabric of Unity is a timely and brilliant gift to those of us concerned with education and social transformation. With rising recognition that decades of educational programs and initiatives aimed at fostering global prosperity and change have fallen short of realizing their initial aspirations, many in the field of education are searching for viable and impactful alternatives. The story of FUNDAEC is an urgent call to reframe the purpose of education itself…” Shabnam Koirala-Azad, Dean of Education,
University of San Francisco

About the authors

Gustavo Correa

Gustavo Correa began his career as a mathematics professor at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. Gustavo was one of the founders of FUNDAEC in 1974 and served as its director from 1988 to 2005. He is the co-author of a number of educational materials produced by FUNDAEC. In 2008 he was elected to the Universal House of Justice, the international governing council of the Bahá’í Faith, which he served until 2018. Since his return to Colombia in 2018, Gustavo has continued as an advisor to FUNDAEC and other development and education organizations. Among current endeavors, he helped mobilize a network of 1,500 people across 800 initiatives to quickly respond to the food insecurity problem triggered by COVID-19 in Colombia. This project, Growing Hope, is one of the key inspirations for this book.

Gustavo holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Bradley Wilson

Dr. Bradley Wilson is Associate Professor of Geography and Executive Director of the West Virginia University Center for Resilient Communities. For 20 years Bradley has conducted research in Nicaragua, Colombia, and West Virginia on the response of communities to regional economic crises and the central role of solidarity, mutual aid, grassroots initiatives, and social movements in forging alternative rural development pathways in those regions. In recent years he has embraced his identity as a participatory action researcher–working in teams to accompany community partners as they work for social change. With his students he has established a robust action research program focused on cooperative economics, food justice, food system development, community health, and environmental justice in West Virginia and Appalachia. For the past five years, Bradley has collaborated with FUNDAEC on projects focused on its educational programs and building the capacity of its research teams working on food sovereignty in Norte del Cauca.

Bradley holds a PhD in Geography from Rutgers University.

Haleh Arbab

Dr. Haleh Arbab has over four decades of experience as a leader in education for development. Haleh worked for FUNDAEC from 1982 to 2005, including ten years as director of its Centro Universitario de Bienestar Rural (The University Center for Rural Wellbeing), a Colombian university she co-founded in 1988 that offered over 3,000 students undergraduate and graduate degree programs in education for development. From 2005 to 2018, Haleh served as director of the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity (ISGP), where she participated in efforts to elaborate and promote a Discourse on Science, Religion, and Development in collaboration with international NGOs, government officials, and academics. At ISGP, she also worked on the design, implementation, and evaluation of graduate and undergraduate seminars focused on equipping students on six continents to contribute to constructive social change. She is currently the founding director of the Center for Research in Education for Development (CRED). Her current work focuses on fostering community-based approaches to research and education internationally.

Haleh holds a Doctor of Education from the Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts and a Master’s degree in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania.

Share your experience

Tell us how you’re using the book by emailing weaving@researchfordevelopment.org.

“In the early 1970s, as the seemingly unstoppable development project was at its peak, a group of young visionaries launched an original approach to rural education, grounded in a commitment to place, the environment, and local communities in a predominantly Afro-Colombian region south of the city of Cali, Colombia. Weaving a Fabric of Unity is a compelling chronicle, by some of its protagonists, of the transformative alternative development imagination–endogenous, holistic, regenerative, and grounded in place, spirituality, and the sacred–forged over the span of five decades. With its intergenerational perspective, this engaging book, at once memoir and epistemic and practical reflection, is a counter to the disempowering sundering apart of young people from any sense of place and community, pushed to become digital nomads at the margins of a globalized world. It demonstrates why another social innovation is not only possible but eminently practicable if grounded on values other than individual survival, aggressive competitiveness, and ruthless market rules. A tribute to the persistence of vision, in its pages readers will find an entire pedagogy for weaving place, community, transformation, and hope.” Arturo Escobar, Professor of Anthropology Emeritus,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill