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Key Achievements of 2025: Health Woven from Territories and Their Knowledge
- Sinergias
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
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; administrative staff committed to the organization’s ethos; and specialists in public health, gender, disability, cooperation, governance, and local cultures, among other fields.
In 2025, this collective grew stronger through the projects described below. Although this report focuses primarily on the progress achieved during the year, many of these initiatives build on earlier processes and follow a deliberate trajectory. They emerge from previous collaborations and are guided by commitments that cut across the work of Sinergias: advancing health, nutrition, and the holistic well-being of communities—both now and in the future; promoting interculturality, which recognizes local knowledge, languages, and practices as the starting point in each territory; strengthening a gender perspective; and fostering a vision of governance in which grassroots communities are not replaced in decision-making, but instead deliberate on their own realities, build their own solutions, and bring their perspectives to community, municipal, and national spaces.
Finally, 2025 closed with important news for our community: Sinergias was recognized as a recipient of Action for Women’s Health, an international award that will allow the organization to continue advancing these commitments throughout 2026.
Hatʉoíyamí: Intercultural Community Kitchens in Vaupés
This project, implemented in five Indigenous communities in Vaupés, Colombia—Puerto López, Santa Marta, Tucandira, Pueblo Nuevo, and Puerto Corroncho—strengthened child nutrition, collective care, and the transmission of ancestral knowledge through the participatory construction and equipping of intercultural community kitchens. These kitchens became safe spaces for women, hubs for intergenerational learning, and places where traditional foods are prepared, benefiting 178 families.
The process included workshops on traditional utensils, the community production of five tutorial videos and a booklet, and the strengthening of women’s leadership in the management, prioritization, and monitoring of the initiative. The project addressed critical challenges such as child malnutrition and the loss of traditional food practices.
It was led by Sinergias with funding from the Tamarin Foundation, in partnership with local Indigenous organizations and territorial institutions.
Disability and Ethnicity: Strengthening the Leadership of Persons with Disabilities
Since 2024, Sinergias has been promoting an initiative in Vaupés to strengthen the leadership of persons with disabilities and their participation in both community governance spaces and advocacy processes at the municipal, departmental, and national levels. The initiative is implemented through participatory meetings and workshops held in the territories, where persons with disabilities themselves are the leading voices.
The project responds to the historic invisibilization of this population—marked by census underreporting and exclusion from decision-making—and seeks to close quality-of-life gaps by promoting the recognition of traditional care practices, supporting the development of person-centered life plans, and incorporating a disability perspective into Indigenous organizational and health systems, including the Indigenous Intercultural Health System (SISPI).
The strategy has strengthened the Luz Propia core group in the urban area of Mitú and has also led to the creation of a leadership school. In addition, a disability perspective has been integrated across Sinergias’ institutional policies. During 2025, the initiative was implemented with support from the Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA), with the participation of persons with disabilities, traditional authorities, and community leaders from the territory.
The Maternal–Perinatal Care Pathway in the Municipality of Patía, Cauca: A Historic Gap
In the municipality of Patía, Cauca, Sinergias strengthened the comprehensive maternal–perinatal care pathway (RIAMP) through coordinated work with ESE El Bordo and the municipal territorial authority, with the aim of closing critical gaps in the health system’s capacity.
Through planning processes, technical support, and the application of audit and self-assessment tools—which helped identify structural gaps—the initiative strengthened health personnel through hybrid training in contraception, preconception care, and obstetric emergencies, among other topics. Clinical protocols aligned with Resolution 3280 of 2018 were also developed for each stage of the care pathway, from preconception to newborn care.
Implementing these protocols had historically been a challenge in Patía, in a context shaped by armed conflict and geographic barriers. The initiative incorporated the voices of community leaders and service users, integrated traditional knowledge such as that of midwives and traditional healers, and introduced technological tools—including Power BI dashboards and Excel-based alert systems—to improve monitoring, georeferencing of pregnant women, and risk management.
The process also included a component to strengthen local communication capacities and was made possible thanks to financial support from Lever for Change and the Maternal and Child Health Award.
Alcohol Consumption in Indigenous Communities of Vaupés: An Intercultural Diagnosis
Sinergias conducted a mixed-methods study, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, in four Indigenous communities in Vaupés—Macaquiño, Tucunaré, Mituseño-Urania, and Ceima Cachivera—to understand alcohol consumption from an intercultural perspective.
Through surveys—including the use of the AUDIT screening tool—focus groups, and community dialogues, the research generated locally grounded evidence on patterns of consumption, cultural contexts, and their social and gender impacts. The study also recognized chicha as an ancestral beverage with ritual and social functions within these communities.
The research identified high levels of risk associated with gender-based violence and suicide, but also a strong degree of community awareness of these harms, revealing a profound cultural ambivalence toward alcohol. These findings highlight the limitations of approaches based solely on prohibition or decontextualized education and underscore the need to strengthen local processes of regulation, care, and governance in dialogue with the health system, as the basis for an intercultural health response built from the territories.
Diploma Course in Breastfeeding and Infant Feeding in 20 Municipalities of Cauca
In December 2025, Sinergias delivered an in-person theoretical and practical training program on counseling in breastfeeding and young child feeding, organized into seven working groups. The initiative trained 101 participants from 20 municipalities in the department of Cauca, strengthening local capacities in a key area for maternal and child health.
A total of 28 institutions from the health and social sectors participated, including the departmental health authority, three municipal authorities, one Health Plan Administrator, twelve public hospitals (three complementary-level and nine primary-level), six Indigenous Health Service Providers (IPSI), one private primary-level health provider, and two programs of the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (ICBF), as well as Universidad del Cauca and Universidad Antonio Nariño.
Participants came from a range of health professions, with a particularly strong presence of nursing assistants. Strengthening institutional and community capacities, while promoting quality health care with a territorial approach, is an essential part of Sinergias’ mission. The program formed part of the Departmental Collective Interventions Plan (PIC) and was implemented in partnership with E.S.E. Centro 1 de Piendamó.
Tejedoras de Saberes: Indigenous Leadership, Self-Care, and Food Sovereignty in Vaupés
In 2025, the Corazón de Ají process continued through the strengthening of the Indigenous women’s group Tejedoras de Saberes in Mitú (Vaupés). These women assumed a role of community leadership to promote ancestral practices related to food sovereignty, child nutrition, and the care of pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Through ten community gatherings, these leaders shared educational and audiovisual materials developed through the project—later incorporated by ESE Hospital San Antonio de Mitú into its maternity and parenthood courses—and participated in the Feria de Sabores y Saberes organized by the Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas Sinchi. At the same time, they strengthened their organizational and communication capacities.
The process responded to high levels of child malnutrition in Vaupés and to the limited cultural relevance of food and health policies in the Amazonian context. Led by Sinergias with support from the Fundación Nous Cims, the project involved women leaders from four Associations of Indigenous Traditional Authorities, local communities, and institutional partners such as the ESE Hospital San Antonio de Mitú, the Takaka collective, and the Women’s Office. It also included coordination spaces with AATIAM and territorial recognition from OPIAC.
The results laid the groundwork for the creation of a Leadership School and also contributed to strengthening Sinergias as an organization, including the achievement of the international Action for Women’s Health recognition.
Sinergias’ Contribution to the Health Course of the Amazonian University Program
Sinergias contributed to the development of the training program Health and Well-being in the Amazon, part of the Amazonian University Program (PUAM), an initiative led by a network of Catholic universities across the Pan-Amazon region. The program aims to train territorial leaders capable of defending the right to health and well-being from their communities and territories.
To this end, Sinergias designed and developed the content for five training units, which PUAM incorporated into a broader curriculum composed of three main courses. These units address key themes including territorial health governance, community-based systems for the care of life, the use of information for action, community agreements, the prevention of health issues, and pathways of care and access to services.
The units integrate an intercultural approach and draw on tools and experiences developed by Sinergias throughout its institutional trajectory. They are designed for community leaders, health promoters, and Amazonian youth committed to their territories, strengthening their capacities to advocate for the right to health and well-being.
Territorial Governance: Progress of the SISPI within AATIAM
Since 2018, Sinergias has supported Asociación de Autoridades Tradicionales Indígenas del Área de Influencia de Mitú (AATIAM) in strengthening its Indigenous Intercultural Health System (SISPI). The central objective of this process is to consolidate territorial governance grounded in Indigenous leadership.
As part of this work, the Association consolidated a core working group that, in addition to advancing the development of the SISPI, facilitated meetings with different communities to collectively design care strategies, with particular emphasis on maternal and child health and on the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. These actions are intended to be incorporated into the Collective Interventions Plan (PIC).
At the same time, progress continued on the development of the AATIAM SISPI document, which compiles knowledge related to the management of seasonal cycles—such as traditional ecological calendars—together with epidemiological information and territorial planning tools that support dialogue with health institutions and contribute to the Indigenous Life Plan.
Advances in this process have been presented in coordination spaces such as the permanent consultation roundtable with the Indigenous peoples of Vaupés and the technical health roundtable. Through these spaces, AATIAM has positioned itself as a pioneering organization in the development of the SISPI, while members of the core working group have become key references on this topic within the territory.
Community-Led Initiatives
The following initiatives were developed and implemented by community leaders in Vaupés, with technical support from Sinergias.
En busca del bienestar was carried out in the Indigenous community of Santa Marta (Vaupés). The project strengthened the use of medicinal plants and traditional medicine through gatherings with knowledge holders and families, intergenerational transmission of knowledge, and the establishment of a community planting space, in coordination with the Indigenous association Unión Indígena Cuduyari.
An analysis of chicha drinking practices in the community of Ceima Cachivera (Vaupés) enabled, through dialogue with knowledge holders, women, and community authorities, a deeper understanding of the impacts of alcohol consumption on community coexistence. The process also helped define traditional guidelines for its management and strengthened community practices of regulation and collective care in collaboration with AATIAM.
Duti Mariro Nisetira, designed for the Indigenous community of Bogotá Cachivera (Vaupés), seeks to preserve knowledge of traditional botanical medicine through the creation of a community garden and intergenerational learning processes. The initiative responds to the progressive loss of this knowledge and to the limited incorporation of intercultural approaches within the health system.
Protectores de la Selva was implemented in the communities of Bogotá Cachivera, Murutinga, and Timbó (Vaupés) with youth linked to associations within AATAC. The initiative produced a community-based diagnosis on well-being and mental health from Indigenous perspectives and generated inputs for future community strategies for psychosocial care.