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The Bahá’í Academy is constantly in touch with reputed educational institutions that offer programmes in the fields of personal development and social progress. Two of these international institutions are among its regular collaborators, FUNDAEC and ACME.
Foundation for the Application and Teaching of the Sciences (FUNDAEC)
FUNDAEC was established at the University of Valle in Colombia in 1974 by a group of professors who were looking for new strategies to develop the capacities of people and to generate knowledge in isolated regions of the country. The concept of FUNDAEC has caught the imagination of a number of contemporary thinkers. Uwe Henrich, one of the members of the board of directors of the Asian Development Bank, has described FUNDAEC as "a system of highest potential that could solve the problems of Third World Countries”.
The Club of Budapest has honored FUNDAEC, a radically new educational program, with the prestigious Change the World -- Best Practice Award. In his speech at the award ceremony, Peter Spiegel, the Secretary General of the Club of Budapest, characterized the project as "the most considerable revolution of education in the twentieth century." "The genius of this new educational model," Mr. Spiegel explained, "lies in the fact that it teaches
people living in Third World Countries to take charge of their own development processes and begin to interact as equals with the rest of the world."
Through its collaboration with FUNDAEC the Bahá’í Academy includes some of the very unique modules produced by FUNDAEC is Academy’s course on “Fostering Personal Development and Social Progress”.
Association For Creative Moral Education (ACME)
ZIPoPo or “Happy Hippo Show’ is the main area of collaboration. It is an interactive performance program that combines scriptwriting, acting, directing and facilitating to teach ethical decision making skills through audience participation. ZIPoPo was developed in Russia, was shown on 22 television stations there and is now in 62 countries around the world. The concept underlying "ZIPOPO" is to present viewers with an opportunity to look at moral or ethical issues and to provide them with the means to approach life problems and find positive solutions through specific dramatic examples.
Through its collaboration with ACME the Bahá’í Academy has conducted training courses on “Happy Hippo Show” for students and has included it as one of its educational elements in Academy’s course “Fostering Personal Development and Social Progress”.
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The Academy 
