About

Aspaen is a Colombian non-profit organisation founded in 1964 as a project to promote education in Colombia. It currently operates over the country with 21 institutions in eight cities throughout the country. Rafael Bedoya Rivas has been at the helm of the organisation’s legal department as legal coordinator since 2005. Since then, he has continually developed his own role and the role of the organisation’s legal department with the aim of awakening the legal awareness of all 21 educational institutions under Aspaen’s umbrella. Bedoya Rivas has been instrumental in creating the company’s current procedures for handling external inquiries and defining internal legal frameworks for decisions taken across Aspean. Consequently, all institutions within the organisation are now equipped with the tools to make informed and swift decisions. With the assistance of Aspaen´s go-to external legal advisors, Pinilla Gonzalez & Prieto, and the cooperation of Colombia’s general attorney, Bedoya Rivas has been able to effectively combat state interference on parental and school autonomy to choose a course of education. This has at times been contentious, especially in light of Colombia’s intervention on schools’ internal policies on topics such as gender identity, sexuality and religion. A large part of Bedoya Rivas’ success at Aspaen is owed to the fact that his own beliefs align well with the organisation’s philosophy to help parents become the primary educators of their children. He comments, ‘both the importance of education to our country´s development and the critical role of schools and preschools in the training of children and families, who are part of our educational community, is clear. It is important to achieve these objectives, mainly to ensure the respect for our legal system and for the rights of those involved in educational processes’.