In the weeks following the recent earthquakes in Colombia and Venezuela, Fondo Acción Urgente para Latinoamérica y el Caribe (FAU LAC, Urgent Action for Fund Latin America and the Caribbean) received more than 50 Rapid Response Grant requests, representing at least USD 540,000 in funding requested by movements and organizations already responding in their communities. Requests continue to come in, and needs will keep growing over the months ahead. We need to mobilize at least USD 1 million to sustain and expand this response.
On June 24, two powerful earthquakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5, struck north-central Venezuela. On August 10, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia. These disasters have killed and injured thousands of people, damaged homes and critical infrastructure, and disrupted the lives and livelihoods of communities across both countries. To date, in Venezuela, 6,301 people had died, and 93,516 had been treated in hospitals; in Colombia, more than 466,000 people across 498 municipalities had been affected.
Just days after the earthquake, a space normally used for collective work in Venezuela was already sheltering 18 families who had lost their homes. People needed places to sleep; electricity and communications had to remain up and running; transportation had to be organized. Those who had spent days responding also needed care as they navigated fear, aftershocks, and their own losses. By the time the request reached FAU LAC, the response was already underway. What was needed were resources to keep it going.
In an emergency, time matters. So does who gets to decide what the response looks like and how resources are used. At FAU LAC, we start from a clear premise: people who live in and know their contexts should be able to set their own priorities, and funding practices need to respond to their timelines and decisions. The humanitarian responses described in the requests we receive grow out of that grounded knowledge, centering the lives, care, and holistic safety of women, LGBTIQNB+ people, and communities facing greater risks. Physical, emotional, community, and legal protection are interconnected, all part of the same practice of care.
This way of responding is part of the history of the Urgent Action Funds, which were created to stand with activists and movements facing threats and opportunities that demand swift action. Our model combines rapid funding with accompaniment that respects movements’ knowledge and autonomy. Collective care is part of this political commitment: sustaining activism means caring for the people who make it possible, so funding can also cover food, rest, mental health support, and care spaces for those leading the response.
When we talk about movements, we mean social and feminist organizations and networks, Indigenous and Afro-descendant groups, rural and environmental movements, LGBTIQNB+ groups, organizations of people with disabilities, territorial and human rights defenders, and many other forms of collective organizing across Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Rapid Response Grant requests we have received so far include funding for food, water, medicines, and hygiene supplies; temporary shelter; repairs to homes and community spaces; electricity and connectivity; medical and mental health care; transportation; fees for people doing the work; and protection measures. Some groups began responding with their own funds before any outside funding arrived. Activists gathered information about missing people and organized the distribution of menstrual and personal hygiene products, needs that often receive less attention in the first days of an emergency. With funding, they were also able to provide health guidance, psychological first aid, and care spaces for women, girls, and trans people, many of them while dealing with damage to their own homes.
This is why fast, flexible funding matters. In the first few days, the most urgent need may be food, shelter, or medical care; weeks later, people may need to repair a community space, restore a source of income, or support someone through grief. People on the ground recognize those shifts as they happen. Funding needs to move with them.
An earthquake happens in a moment, but inequality was already there
Resourcing Strategies in an Age of Permacrisis, research by the Urgent Action Sister Funds (of which FAU LAC is a member) and the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, understands crises as a continuum. The moments we commonly recognize as crises are rooted in longer-term processes that create precarity and compound inequalities already shaping people’s lives.
In Colombia, the earthquake struck communities already living with poverty, racism, the consequences of armed conflict, and insufficient state presence. Some people who have experienced displacement and loss before are once again facing the loss of a home or livelihood. Trans and non-binary people may also encounter discrimination or violence when trying to access emergency assistance. In Venezuela, the emergency is unfolding in a context where feminist and LGBTIQNB+ activists were already facing threats and restrictions on their work. Alongside medical care, shelter, and essential supplies, the requests we are funding include protection measures, legal and psychological support, and physical and digital security.
The research questions funding models that concentrate resources around the most visible moment of an emergency. Short funding cycles can leave movements continually responding to what is immediately in front of them, even as the causes and consequences of crises unfold over years. It points instead toward flexible, long-term funding for the networks and conditions that allow movements to survive, protect one another, care for their communities, organize, and keep acting over time.
Putting resources directly in movements’ hands
The relationships of trust, knowledge of local contexts, and forms of organizing that make rapid response possible have been built over years. The research describes networks of survival, protection, care, communication, and solidarity that movements maintain every day and that become more visible during a crisis.
Direct funding recognizes that knowledge by keeping decisions about resources close to the people who will use them. Gatherings and exchanges create space for movements to share what they are learning and the strategies they are developing, while our advocacy within philanthropy brings those experiences into the spaces where funding decisions are made. What movements are learning as they respond to these crises also raises important questions for funders: what gets funded, for how long, under what conditions, and who gets to decide how money is used.
Today, we have more than 50 requests representing at least USD 540,000, and demand will continue to grow. Our goal is to mobilize at least USD 1 million to sustain the responses already underway in Colombia and Venezuela and to support what comes next: rebuilding homes and collective spaces, restoring livelihoods, strengthening networks of care and protection, and accompanying communities and activists well beyond the first weeks after the earthquakes.
Reaching this goal means FAU LAC can keep responding as new requests arrive, putting resources directly in the hands of people who know their communities and territories, and standing with movements through the months ahead.
