Through encounters with Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and campesino communities, University of Washington students reflect on health, equity, and intercultural care during a learning journey with Sinergias in Colombia. Their experiences highlight the importance of listening, respecting community knowledge, and understanding the connections between health, history, and territory.

After 15 years of uninterrupted work, Sinergias is today a vibrant and diverse community. It brings together Indigenous leaders from the Colombian Amazon; members of Afro-Colombian and rural communities from different regions of the country; and young people and women who ensure that their territories are heard through their own languages and ways of understanding the world. It also includes health professionals working across every stage of the care pathways; administrativ

Nearly eighty proposals were awarded among thousands of applications from 119 countries. The award highlights Sinergias’s community-based and intercultural approach in the Colombian departments of Cauca and Vaupés. Sinergias, the organization that since 2011 has strengthened intercultural public health models in Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and rural communities in Colombia, was announced as a winner of an Action for Women’s Health award. The latter is a global funding initiat