UW Global Health, Community Health, & Asset-Based Community Development

In this experiential learning course, students will travel to Sri Lanka with a UW faculty member to learn the basic elements of holistic grassroots development strategies with a special focus on the implications for individual, family and village health. Utilizing asset-based community development strategies as well as Gandhian and Buddhist practice, students will explore nutrition, maternal and child health, infectious disease, women’s right, traditional healing and more in the context of ethnic and religious diversity, poverty and recovery from natural disasters and civil war.

Traveling to areas of Sri Lanka including Colombo, Kandy, Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura and Galle, students will visit cultural and ancient archaeological sites, the Temple of the Tooth, spice gardens, elephant orphanage and more. The main event, Shramadana, meaning sharing of labor, will take place in a village.

This program has a prerequisite course offered during the Fall semester. The combination of the fall course and the two-credit study abroad program meets the CALS International Studies Requirement. The program is also approved as a field experience for the Certificate in Global Health.

For Winter Intersession 2020-2021, the application deadline is May 1, 2020.

This article was posted in International Education & Study Abroad.