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When Bita Correa ’06 was growing up in Cali, Colombia, dinner table conversation focused on education and the work her parents were doing with FUNDAEC, the Spanish acronym for the Foundation for the Application and Teaching of the Sciences. Correa didn’t think a career in education was for her, but the pull of FUNDAEC proved too strong. Today, Correa is the director of the organization her uncle, Farzam Arbab, and father, Gustavo Correa, helped found, and her mother, Haleh Arbab ’79, literally wrote the book on—Weaving a Fabric of Unity was published last year on the organization's 50th anniversary.

FUNDAEC projects include bringing secondary education to rural areas and training teachers. “It is education for a purpose,” Correa says, “for people to be participants and be active in the development of their communities.”

Together, Correa and Arbab talked about their ties to FUNDAEC and to Bryn Mawr.

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION

Arbab grew up in the Bahá'í faith, which emphasizes equality between men and women. It was never a question that she would go to college, and—growing up between the United States, where her father taught at Harvard University, and Tehran—she was certain she would go to college in the U.S. “

The person who was key in my decision was Betty Vermey, who was a very special person,” she says. “I owe my presence at Bryn Mawr, and also I think Bita’s, to her.”

Correa knew about Bryn Mawr, of course, but growing up in Colombia, women’s colleges weren’t common, and most students went to college for a specific career. Having attended a co-ed high school, she was attracted to the idea of feeling free and confident in the classroom and being able to explore various paths through the liberal arts. “The courses I took there, the professors I met there; it was a quality education,” Correa says. “It was serious, it was rigorous … I think it gave me a good foundation for everything I do.”

JOINING FUNDAEC

When she was 14, Arbab visited her brother in Colombia. He had just founded FUNDAEC, and she thinks he always imagined her working with him. While studying at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, she realized she could use her skills for change.

“If you concentrate on yourself, you will never feel satisfied and happy,” Arbab says. For years, she led the FUNDAEC university program for training teachers from around the country, especially rural areas.

Correa went on to earn her master’s in sociology and Ph.D. in education. “I thought the only worthy profession was a profession that helped people,” Correa says. “In a way, my parents’ work and life had been to help people.”

She initially started working for FUNDAEC in an interim capacity but stayed. “It’s a hard place to leave because you see it has a lot of impact,” Correa says.

“Where else would I see this much impact and have so many opportunities to be creative and explore?”

BUILDING A LEGACY

Impact doesn’t happen overnight. “One of the things I think about is how change is generational,” Correa says. In 50 years, she points out, that’s three generations able to bring change to their families and communities.

“There are over 1,000 teachers that were trained by FUNDAEC that are now in the public school system in Colombia,” Correa says. “What is the impact of these thousand teachers? And what would happen if we had them train other teachers in the schools? All of a sudden you go from 1,000 teachers to 1,000 schools. There’s a lot of potential.”