Rethinking Humanitarian Preparedness Through Local Leadership

Claudia González and Diego Rivadeneira reflect on what Venezuela's recent earthquakes reveal about trust, community leadership, and why preparedness must begin long before the next emergency.

August t 6, 2026.

When the earthquakes struck Venezuela in June, humanitarian organisations faced familiar questions: how quickly could assistance reach affected communities, who could identify the most urgent needs, and how could children and families be protected amid profound uncertainty?

The answers did not begin with logistics or funding. They began with relationships built over years. At a moment when governments, donors, multilaterals, and humanitarian agencies are reassessing how to prepare for increasingly frequent disasters, Venezuela offers a timely reminder that preparedness cannot be reduced to plans and supplies.

Trust is humanitarian infrastructure

The scale of the 24 June 2026 earthquakes is difficult to comprehend. According to official figures from the Venezuelan Government, 5.398 people lost their lives, 16,740 were injured and 17,907 were left without homes. The World Bank estimates direct physical damage at US$19.6 billion, underscoring the enormous task of recovery ahead.

Faced with devastation on this scale, technical expertise, financing, and coordination matter enormously. Yet another resource proved equally decisive: trust.

The response highlighted the vital role of trusted local churches as first responders. Their ability to reach people quickly, identify those most in need and mobilise support was recognised not only by affected communities, but also across the humanitarian sector and in international media coverage of the disaster.

When the ground began to shake, churches did not need to identify the most vulnerable households or explain why they had arrived. They already knew the communities because they were part of them. They knew which families had young children, where older people lived, who depended on medication and which neighbourhoods were likely to become isolated. As one testimony collected during the response simply stated:

“The churches were the first to respond.”

This is more than a moving reflection. It reveals something humanitarian policy still struggles to recognise. The effectiveness of an emergency response is shaped not only by what organisations can deploy after disaster strikes, but by the credibility and relationships cultivated long before it does.

Building Capacity Before Crisis Strikes

Preparedness is often assessed through contingency plans, simulation exercises, emergency stocks and coordination mechanisms. These remain essential. But they are incomplete. During the two years preceding the earthquakes, World Vision Venezuela worked alongside, children and faith leaders through regular disaster preparedness and crisis management training. Just one month before the disaster, more than one hundred pastors and church leaders came together to strengthen their capacity to respond to emergencies.

Reflecting afterwards, one pastor from Playa Grande observed:

“God prepared the churches for this new calamity.”

Faith alone did not organise the response. Preparation did.

The training did not prevent loss, nor did it remove fear. It enabled local leaders to assess risks, organise volunteers, protect children, support distressed families and coordinate effectively with humanitarian partners. Communities did not begin from zero because investment in local capacity had already begun long before the emergency.

Too often, preparedness is treated as something humanitarian organisations own. In reality, they are most effective when they strengthen preparedness that already exists within communities.

The future of humanitarian action is local by design

Across La Guaira, Caracas, Miranda, Falcón, Aragua and Carabobo, churches helped identify isolated communities, organised information on missing people, established child-friendly spaces and supported families experiencing profound distress. They were not implementing someone else's response. They were leading their own.

When the earthquakes struck, these foundations enabled World Vision to mobilise rapidly, building on existing relationships, local knowledge, and trusted community networks.

By 31 July, World Vision had provided humanitarian assistance through more than 91,000 interventions, including child protection, food security, WASH and temporary shelter support for over 13,000 households. These achievements reflected a collective effort rooted in local leadership, with communities drawing on the confidence, skills and networks they had built to take action before external assistance arrived.

That experience has important implications for governments, donors, and multilateral institutions. Financing local preparedness cannot remain a secondary objective within humanitarian programming. It should become a central investment priority because it enables faster, more relevant, and more sustainable responses when crises occur.

Preparedness must be redefined before the next disaster 

As Susana Cordeiro Guerra, Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank, recently observed:

"The earthquakes have disrupted lives, damaged critical infrastructure, and created new challenges for Venezuela's recovery. Recovering effectively begins with reliable evidence."

Reliable evidence certainly informs recovery. But experience from Venezuela points to another form of evidence that deserves greater recognition: the knowledge already held by communities, local organisations, and faith groups that remain long after international attention moves elsewhere.

This matters because the context is changing rapidly. As UNDRR notes, climate-related hazards are increasing in both frequency and intensity, exacerbating disaster risks, deepening vulnerabilities, and contributing to rising humanitarian needs worldwide. Meanwhile, the World Bank estimates that 1.2 billion people are at high risk from hazards such as floods, droughts, hurricanes and extreme heat, underscoring the need for greater investment in community resilience and preparedness.

As governments prepare new disaster risk strategies and donors make increasingly difficult funding choices, the opportunity is not simply to improve emergency response. It is to redefine preparedness itself.

Preparedness begins long before the earth moves. It begins by investing in trusted local institutions, strengthening community leadership and recognising that resilience cannot be deployed at the point of crisis. It must already exist.

About the Authors:

Claudia González is a social communicator and journalist with more than 20 years of experience leading third-sector organizations. She currently works with World Vision Venezuela, where she serves as Interinstitutional Relations and External Engagement Manager, as well as in the area of Faith and Development.

Diego Rivadeneira is an Ecuadorian communicator and Regional Social Mobilization Officer for World Vision in Latin America and the Caribbean. He has extensive experience in digital communication, social marketing, storytelling, and the mobilization of faith communities around children, mission, and humanitarian causes.