Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
A Miami diaspora nonprofit turned to the same Colombian partner it worked with in 2020
A researcher of diaspora philanthropy says immigrant-led nonprofits reach disaster zones early because their local partners are already in place. The clearest support offered for that is one Miami group working with the same Colombian counterpart twice.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Earthquakes in Venezuela and Colombia and floods and mudslides in Nepal have killed tens of thousands of people in 2026, damaging hundreds of thousands of homes and destroying some entire neighborhoods.
- For Nepal, the UN Global Emergency Fund, Washington and Brussels have together committed roughly $8 million, split as $2 million, more than $3 million and just under $3 million.
- Give to Colombia and the Colombian nonprofit Presentes Corporation have launched Colombia Se Levanta, meaning "Colombia rises up," to raise recovery money after the Aug. 10 magnitude 7.4 Chocó earthquake.
- The Albany, New York, Nepalese Society is calling on more than 600 Nepalese to give in response to the Nepal mudslides.
- After the June 2026 Venezuela earthquakes, Venezuelans living abroad, including business owners and emigrant-led groups such as Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid, mobilized.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint No one can budget against this channel. Until someone estimates diaspora disaster giving separately from remittances, an agency deciding how much to co-fund is working without a base figure.
- decision The input worth acquiring ahead of a disaster is a named local partner with a live project, and that has to be arranged in a year when nothing has collapsed.
- contradiction The same essay calls these groups among the first responders and small in scale, so a response planner should treat them as early money and not as volume.
- precedent Because the same two organizations have now paired twice, the likely default after the next Colombian disaster is the partner already on file.
What the record supports is narrower than a speed claim. Give to Colombia, based in Miami-Dade County and led by Colombians living there, worked with the Colombian nonprofit Presentes Corporation after Hurricane Iota in November 2020, and it is working with Presentes again after the Chocó earthquake [15][17][19][18]. The counterparty was picked before the disaster and had been through one cycle with the same US partner.
The essay was written by a researcher who studies philanthropy and nonprofits and has published on diaspora-led organizations [8]. He attributes the speed of these groups to partnerships already forged with community groups in their homelands, backed by a donor pool in the US [13][7]. The essay gives no dates of first disbursement, for the diaspora appeals or for the government and UN money pledged to Nepal [5]. Without those dates, the comparison with institutional donors rests on case description.
More than $900 billion in remittances crosses borders each year, and the author writes that diaspora development and disaster giving is money on top of that, with no authoritative estimate available [9][10].
Providencia is the one response in the essay with a dollar figure attached to an outcome. Iota, a Category 4 storm, damaged 98% of the island's infrastructure and displaced an estimated 40% of its 5,000-plus inhabitants, roughly 2,000 people [16][4]. Stand Up: Providencia Reborn raised $500,000, which paid for a community center and the reconstruction of local inns, and the initiative counted more than 1,000 Colombians helped back into tourism businesses [17]. Divided by that count, the campaign is under $500 a person, spent on buildings [3].
Membership counts leave a wide range. In the author's study of Mexican hometown associations, groups typically had 20 to 500 active members, across about 3,000 associations in the United States [21]. Multiplied out, national active membership is somewhere between 60,000 and 1.5 million, a 25-fold spread [2].
The evidence here is case description of organizations that succeeded, and cases chosen that way can show that partnered groups respond without showing how much the partnership adds [13]. The part that transfers to anyone designing a response is simple: Colombian diaspora organizations keep projects running in areas including education and nutrition, and they scale those up when a disaster hits [14].
What to watch
- Whether Colombia Se Levanta publishes a total raised and dates of first disbursement in Chocó.
- Any estimate of diaspora disaster and development giving reported separately from the $900 billion remittance flow.
- Whether the US-based Nepal appeals turn into named local partners delivering work, or stop at fundraising.