Migration Crisis in the Andes: A Case Study of Localization and Acompañamiento from Medellin, Colombia

1 Introduction

People move away from their homelands for multiple reasons. This includes economic and labor considerations; the so-called push/pull theory of migration. Populations are growing in low-income countries and shrinking in high-income countries which creates a push out of low-income countries and a pull toward high-income countries where a workforce is in demand (Garip 2016; Munck 2008). Migration is also a consequence of a desire to escape dangerous situations due to political strife, war, atrocities, and prosecutions. These forms of migration are often considered forced migration (Mingot and de Arimatéia da Cruz 2013). Forced migration is understood as distinct from economic and labor migration, but this division both in theory and practice is diminishing in many settings (Bada and Feldmann 2017; Massey et al. 1993; UNHCR 2022). In Latin America especially, migrants leave home countries for economic and labor reasons often compounded by violence and drug cartel activity (Garip 2016).

As a team of Latin Americanist scholars and practitioners, who study and work in nonprofit organizations, we explore how local nonprofits respond to migration crises. In this article, we focus on the migration context across Colombia and Venezuela, two countries situated in the Andean region of South America with histories of migratory patterns, and geographies where public goods and services by government can be limited, leaving nonprofits often as primary service providers (Appe and Layton 2016; Garkisch, Heidingsfelder, and Beckmann 2017). Colombia has received 2.5 million migrants from Venezuela since 2017 due to the country’s economic hardship and political strife (https://www.crisisgroup.org/). In fact, after Turkey, Colombia hosts the second most absolute number of refugees globally (UNHCR 2022).

We explore our research question through the case study of the nonprofit organization Fundación Huellas. This organization was created to serve local children who were out of school due to forced displacement from Colombian territories that faced violence. This has expanded from serving internally displaced Colombian families to Colombians who are returning from Venezuela and Venezuelan migrants and refugees. Fundación Huellas, legally incorporated in 2007, is located in the outskirts of Medellín, Colombia, a city that has received the second largest number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees after the country’s capital, Bogotá. Medellín hosts almost 10 % of Venezuelans in Colombia, estimated to be 190,000 migrants and refugees (GIFMM 2021; Yu 2022). The case study of Fundación Huellas outlines a local, community-based nonprofit responding to the current migratory crisis in Colombia. While micro-territorial in scope (the organization focuses on two neighboring municipalities in the department of Antioquia outside of Medellín), we posit that the case helps to understand the role(s) of nonprofit organizations in migration crises and demonstrates an important dimension to localization – accompaniment – in the provision of public goods and services in these contexts.

We consider localization to be organizational policies, processes, deliverables and behaviors in development aid that take into account local actors, their perspectives and their knowledge; and that promote ownership of development by local communities. The importance of localization for nonprofit organizations aiding in crises has gotten renewed attention, given the need for local responses during the COVID-19 pandemic (WINGS 2023). Localization as a concept considers local and community input and ownership to be critical to the provision of goods and services. It also suggests that funding can be more effective if directed to local actors. In this paper, we seek to better understand localization in migration crises through accompaniment which we explain in the next section. This objective contrasts with what has often been a focus of migration response and development aid: it has concentrated more on the role of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and other Northern actors (van Wessel, Kontinen, and Bawole 2023).

Prior to explaining our case study approach, first the paper briefly addresses nonprofits in migration-affected contexts and the localization discussion in development aid. Second, the background on the empirical setting is provided to situate our case study. Then, we outline our methods and present our findings. We find that localization should be explored and understood in migratory contexts as also including the dimension of “acompañamiento” (or accompaniment in English), which can manifest in daily nonprofit practice while responding to crises. The case study seeks to introduce and explain the dimension of “acompañamiento” in localization and migration crises. We build on studies about nonprofits in migration-affected contexts that have considered accompaniment (e.g. Peralta and Vaitkus 2019; Wilson 2012), calling on the field and funders to better recognize and support this orientation in local nonprofit responses.

2 Nonprofits and Migration

Garkisch, Heidingsfelder, and Beckmann’s (2017) systematic literature review on the role of the nonprofit sector in services related to migration provided a welcomed, comprehensive overview of nonprofit organizations^[1] in this important policy area. Their review demonstrated the limited geographic scope in the research about nonprofit organizations and migration and that the topic needs further theoretical development (Garkisch, Heidingsfelder, and Beckmann 2017). In particular, they call on scholars to further research about how nonprofits can perform and serve better in migratory contexts.

The research on immigrant- and migrant-serving nonprofits has grown over the last 20 years. The literature in part centers on how nonprofit organizations respond to the ebbs and flows of migration crises (e.g. Meyer and Simsa 2018; Simsa 2017; Strokosch and Osbornes 2017). It also has captured the support and range of services provided by these nonprofits in destination countries (e.g. Safouane 2017; Van der Leun and Bouter 2015), from basic social services to human rights protection, and how nonprofits manage volunteers in service provision to migrants (Simsa et al. 2018). Furthermore, research has explored specific integration practices (Fernández Guzmán Grassi and Nicole-Berva 2022), the roles of immigrants and migrants as volunteers themselves (Greenspan and Walk forthcoming), and the extent of diversity among immigrant- and migrant-serving nonprofits (e.g. Babis 2016).

We turn to authors who have explored and applied the concept of accompaniment in nonprofits and migration settings. As Peralta and Vaitkus (2019) observe, this is not a new concept, rather it has a rich history in community and development work, especially around health inequities. The concept was brought to the forefront by the work of Paul Farmer and his death in 2022 allowed his contributions to resurface and be reconsidered. Farmer practiced accompaniment in global health through the nongovernmental organization (NGO), Partners In Health, which he co-founded in the late 1980s. Farmer describes accompaniment as the following: “To accompany someone is to go somewhere with him or her … to be present on a journey with a beginning and an end” (Farmer 2011, p. 1). He learned through his work which started in Haiti that “[t]here’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but there are surely basic principles of accompaniment” (Farmer 2011, p. 2). Farmer wanted accompaniment to be the new aid paradigm to achieve the development outcomes that are possible.

While his approach started in the health sector (and in Haiti), he brought it to the orbit of broader development goals, and to other continents and economies, including the U.S. (Farmer 2011). When applied to health inequalities, the model allows a patient to receive care by not having to go to a clinic in, let’s say, an urban center. Rather a patient has what Partners In Health calls a accompagnateur, who provides accompaniment, holistically and locally (Farmer 2006). With the model of accompaniment, he drew on both the need to support local capacity and the need to change how we approach (and fund) health and broader development goals (Farmer 2011). He was cautious about expert knowledge only, explaining, “True accompaniment does not privilege technical expertise above solidarity or compassion or a willingness to tackle what may seem to be insuperable challenges” (2011, p. 8). He noted the challenges to measuring accompaniment, and dismissed this as a reason not to support and fund it (Farmer 2011). In fact, he debated this topic with the largest of donors, and consistently lamented that the lack of funding was always a major issue (Farmer 2006).

To our knowledge, accompaniment has been discussed in the context of migration in the nonprofit literature related to the provision of local language services in the U.S. (Wilson 2012) and immigration documentation in the Dominican Republic (Peralta and Vaitkus 2019). Both studies found the use of the term accompaniment in their data from nonprofit organizations. Wilson (2012) describes “immigrant accompaniment” in the work of U.S. nonprofits as including: “a range of informal services provided to immigrants – client representation, protection, and companionship” (p. 977). Wilson (2012) found that this role in the context of immigration in the U.S. was distinctive to the services provided by nonprofits in comparison to those provided by local governments. Peralta and Vaitkus (2019) found similar patterns. They studied migration in the context of Haitians in the Dominican Republic and the mention of accompaniment was persistent in their qualitative data. They explain that accompaniment: “goes beyond simply pooling resources or providing aid at different points in [service provision]. This role involves being present throughout” the service provision (Peralta and Vaitkus 2019, p. 1326, emphasis added).

In the writing and words of Farmer, accompaniment’s origin is often referenced. It is Latin: ad cum panis and translated to ‘breaking bread together’ (2011, p. 4). It has roots in Catholicism’s liberation theology, a movement prominent in Latin America starting the 1960s which centered on liberating the oppressed with a focus on poverty and social injustices (Farmer 2011). It is perhaps fitting therefore that it was a central theme found in our data about Huellas, a local nonprofit working in the region. And given accompaniment’s focus on local capacity and local orientation, it also is well timed as there is a renewed interest in localization within international development and global philanthropy circles.

3 Localization in Development Aid

Considerations of accompaniment in the work of nonprofits links appropriately to localization. Calls for localization have again emerged due to the perceived ineffectiveness and lack of efficiency in development (Booth and Unsworth 2014; Cabot-Venton and Pongracz 2021; Cernea 1987; Craney and Hudson 2020; Lentfer and Cothran 2017) and evidence of promising local responses during the COVID-19 pandemic (WINGS 2023). Benefits include more resources to projects on the ground (Cabot-Venton and Pongracz 2021), increased community ownership in development projects (https://mcld.org/), and potentially sustained commitment that extends well beyond the presence of external donors and other funders (Abrahams 2022).

Localization re-frames and re-imagines the focus and reliance on Northern actors in development aid. Rather, it considers the challenges to development aid “to be structural and systemic and thus in need of system-level changes rather than small improvements. Such changes would require that Southern CSOs [civil society organizations] be at the centre [sic] and in the lead, rather than playing the role of implementation partners” (van Wessel, Kontinen, and Bawole 2023, p. 2). We have seen several calls for localization often focused on access to funding. Big donor names and initiatives have included the 2016 Grand Bargain (https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand-bargain), which promises a still unrealized earmarked 25 % of humanitarian aid going directly to local actors and bilateral government agencies such as USAID promising more locally-led approaches. USAID recently pledged 25 % of its funding going to directly to local partners (up from its current 6 %) (Saldinger 2021).

With these statements, van Wessel, Kontinen, and Bawole (2023) explain, “[m]any donors that provide funding for civil society initiatives emphasize contextualization and local ownership of programmes; however, they continue to support programming by Northern development [civil society organizations] and channel funds through them as ‘fundermediaries’ that pass funds to other actors as a main function (Sriskandarajah 2015), rather than allocating these funds directly to organizations in the Global South” (van Wessel, Kontinen, and Bawole 2023, p. 2). Efforts for a paradigm shift that values localization need to bring to the forefront truly localized initiatives, which might not be part of the traditional international cooperation landscape. Fundación Huellas provides such as case. We present Fundación Huellas as localized civil society action within geographies that face a migration crisis. Like Peralta and Vaitkus’ (2019) research on nonprofit organizations in Dominican Republic’s migration context, Huellas provides a focus on migration outside of North America and Europe. We draw on the case to better understand the components of sustained, local action through the lens of accompaniment in migration crises.

4 Empirical Setting: Migratory Histories to and from Colombia and Venezuela

Here we briefly narrate the migration patterns in both Colombia and Venezuela dating back to the second half of 20th century to the present. While Venezuela migrants dominate the current migration crisis, Colombia and Venezuela have had “intertwined histories” or what the UNHCR (2023a) calls “circular movements between the two countries” (p. 2). Both countries have experienced fluctuations of emigration (migration away) and immigration (migration to) (Barrera 2018). In the case of Colombia, there have also been significant levels of internally displaced people.

Since the 1960s, economic crises and political violence pushed millions of Colombians to internally migrate and/or migrate abroad, looking for better living conditions and escaping from periods of violence (Espacios de Mujer 2023; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia 2023; Silva and Massey 2015). Internally, Colombia has one of the largest number of displaced populations in the world, at 6.8 million in 2022 (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR 2024). Additionally, five million Colombians have emigrated abroad since the 1960s, which is equivalent to more than 10 percent of the current Colombian population (DNP 2017). Many Colombians who left the country live in United States and Spain, as well as Venezuela; in fact, over two-thirds of immigrants in Venezuela in the 1990s were Colombians (Kurmanaev and Medina 2015). However, today migration to Venezuela from Colombia has decreased and since 2015, Colombia has been on the receiving end. In fact, Colombians, who once emigrated to Venezuela, are now returning to Colombia due to the economic and political crisis (Barrera 2018). More than half a million Colombians have returned from Venezuela since 2015 (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR 2024).

Venezuela’s current out-migration wave started after the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, due to the deterioration of economic conditions and the rise of repression, political persecution, and insecurity under his successor’s (Nicolás Maduro) government (Barrera 2018; Freitez, Viso, and Osorio 2021). Today there are more than seven million Venezuelan migrants outside of Venezuela which represent more than 20 % of the country’s population. Venezuelans have mostly migrated to the United States, Spain, and to Colombia and other Latin American countries (ACNUR 2023). The political context pushed both upper-class and poorer Venezuelan to emigrate, in search of work and means to survive. Migratory conditions continued to worsened and new migrants were less educated, had fewer economic resources, and lacked emigration documents such as passports and visas (ACNUR 2023). Consequently, Venezuelan migrants are often forced to take irregular routes to reach destination countries, making them vulnerable to smugglers, traffickers and armed groups and reliant on the informal economy (ACNUR 2023; Van Praag 2019). Irregular migration by land has resulted in Colombia receiving many Venezuelan migrants, estimated to be more than 2.5 million (Alvarado et al. 2018; CNN 2022).

5 Research Approach and Data Collection

Using the case of the nonprofit organization, Fundación Huellas, our qualitative research approach aims to explore migration crises in the region, particularly in areas where public goods and services by government are almost nonexistent. We purposively selected an organization working with vulnerable populations in Medellín, Colombia. We chose a qualitative approach using a case study design (Stake 1995) to understand how a local nonprofit is responding to empirical realities of migration on the ground. The selected nonprofit is thus a theoretically useful case (Miles and Huberman 1994; see also Eisenhardt 1989), following the interpretive case study methodology for selecting cases which seek to maximize what we can learn (Stake 1995).

Fundación Huellas agreed to participate in the research study and one of its founders is part of the present article’s research team. Thus, the research is conducted through an academic-practitioner collaboration. Under the qualitative design, data collection and analysis were often conducted in tandem (Merriam 1998; Stake 1995). Our first mode of data collected was through participant observation and archival documents, which were complemented by key interviews, allowing for triangulation of data sources to derive key findings, namely a greater understanding of accompaniment.

We engaged in deep participatory observation where we took copious notes and had countless observational points. In addition, we did a thorough and systematic analysis of key organizational documents. These reports were situational analyses, project descriptions and program evaluations. The documents date from 2009 and the most recent is a baseline report from 2023. The documents amassed almost 1350 pages of content (see Appendix A for document inventory). The classification of all the participatory observation and archival data was managed in Excel matrices and Word documents. Text was compiled and stored in the original language (Spanish). The data excerpts that are used to illustrate results are translated into English. These data were complemented by eight in-depth interviews with staff, volunteers, and participants. Such organizational and positional labels were not always mutually exclusive, where some participants, for example, were volunteers and at times were provided a stipend for their time or to cover transportation. The interviews were conducted in Spanish. All participation through interviews was done voluntarily and oral consent was received.^[2]

We coded the data to examine patterns, the similarities and differences to answer our research question, consistent to case study design and analysis (Corbin and Strauss 2008; Miles and Huberman 1994). We relied an inductive analysis (based on emergent themes) that were broadly related to the response to the migration crisis and conducted deductive analysis specific to what we identified as localization practices (e.g. ownership, participation) (Merriam 1998). The academic-practitioner research team facilitated an exchange of information and communication with research participants about the research progress and welcomed comments and feedback. The following provides more details on the selected organization.

6 Fundación Huellas: Internal Displacement and Forced Migration at its Core

Fundación Huellas began as Escuelita de Tablas in 1998 serving local children who were out of school due to forced displacement from Colombian territories that faced violence (namely, from the territories of Urabá and Chocó). Initially, Escuelita de Tablas was an improvised wooden school with a zinc roof top and a dirt floor. In 2004, La Torre Community Center was constructed with international, local government and private funding sources. Thereafter in 2007 Fundación Huellas was legally incorporated as a local Colombian nonprofit organization.

Fundación Huellas serves two municipalities (Medellín and Bello in the department of Antioquia) that have absorbed large quantities of internally displaced populations from Colombia as well as more recently Colombians returning from Venezuela and Venezuelan migrants and refugees. The La Torre in the Santo Domingo Savio II neighborhood in Medellín now with more than 40 years of operation as a neighborhood has simple infrastructure for basic services (water, sanitation), stable housing (cement, brick, and adobe), functioning schools, and some health services. Huellas’ services have been extended to the entire neighborhood. The Granizal neighborhood in the municipality of Bello, ranges from 10 and 20 years old, and is considered still an informal settlement, with limited basic services. Working in this area since 2010, Huellas reports that health issues are of particular concern given the lack of an overarching healthcare system and the absence of sewage and drinking water systems, which leads to challenges with several (preventable) diseases (DR16, 2020, p. 1).

As a receiving city of displaced and migrant populations, the Medellín hillsides are transient, with some families migrating to the neighborhood and using them as a starting point. They end up moving on, migrating into Medellín’s city center or other Colombian territories for more economic and labor opportunities. This has become common for both displaced Colombians and Venezuelan migrants. Just as common, there are cases where families arrive at these neighborhoods and settle for the long term (Huellas staff person, personal communication, May 2023).

By 2015, of the participants of the different projects and services provided by Fundación Huellas, “76.6 % [… had] experienced some type of displacement” (DR6, 2015, p. 2), a figure that has been consistent since. In 2019 …

… 78.5 % of the families [stated] that they had been victims of some victimizing event … such as displacement, homicides, massacres, forced abandonment of land, land dispossession, kidnapping, forced disappearance, and confrontations … that forced families to leave their places of origin (DR14, 2019, p. 2).

The arrival and reception of Venezuelan families in the hillsides of Medellín started to heighten in 2017 and 2018. From 2019, Venezuelans were formally being documented in Fundación Huellas reporting. Due to this growth, Huellas in 2022 broadened its understanding of who it serves and formally extended its mission to include migrant populations, such as those from Venezuela. Since 2022, the organization’s programs:

focus on rights, gender, functional diversity, intercultural and differential approaches, of children, adolescents, youth, adult women and men, older adults, and their families, in situations of vulnerability, poverty, displacement, migration and/or different conditions of inequality and violence (DR20, 2022, p. 1, emphasis added).

Undoubtedly, migrants seek out Huellas’ services. One volunteer notes that it is not uncommon to find community newcomers stopping by to see how the local nonprofit might be able to help. During one visit by the research team, when we arrived, there was a woman reading the calendar posted on the Huellas’ door. A Huellas staff member stopped to talk to her as we approached the building. It was clear that she was not from Medellín, and the hunch was that she was Venezuelan based on her accent. She was sent by the local school to consider Huellas’ afternoon programming for her son. She was hoping he could attend the afternoon sessions to help “burn off some of his energy” (neighborhood woman, personal communication, May 2023). She was welcomed, given information about the schedule, and encouraged to bring her son.

Like in many migration crises around the world, Venezuelan migrants arrive to Colombia in an irregular manner, which means that they do not have work permits and are exposed to situations of extreme needs and labor exploitation; migrants rarely have access to formal employment. For children, the lack of sufficient documentation is a barrier to entering into the school system. Likewise, most families are unable to access health services. All these elements together with the fact that, for the sake of family survival, most migrant parents leave their homes to work, leaving many children unsupervised, interacting and developing, day after day, on the street (DR16, 2020). Due to these realities, Huellas has adopted and developed a comprehensive model of accompaniment in its work.

7 A Model of Acompañamiento

While localization is receiving attention in development aid, it is not a word used and managed by Huellas in the context of its work. Rather, we find through our data analysis that the term acompañamiento captures values related to localization and is more relevant given Huellas’ mission. Indeed, acompañamiento (translated as accompaniment in English) alludes ownership and participation; and furthermore, regular and sustained relationships, “throughout” the service provision (Peralta and Vaitkus 2019, p. 1326). Based on our data, we present a more detailed elaboration of accompaniment in the context of a migration crisis. For Fundación Huellas, accompaniment is both an implicit practice that takes shape in its work, and explicitly woven into its approach. For example, it is emphasized in report titles such as the “Ecomanatiales Accompaniment Report” (DR5, 2015) or in project names such as “Academic accompaniment for children and youth of Medellín in times of Covid-19” (DR21, 2020).

Huellas practices process-oriented accompaniment which includes four types of accompaniment: psychosocial, academic, technical and recreational. In addition, it considers participant-oriented accompaniment, which includes three types of support, individual and/or collective: institutional, family, and children and youth support. These types of accompaniment manifest in project proposals, designs and evaluations and became very present in our observational and interview data. Examples of accompaniment appear in the stories told by staff, volunteers and participants. The components of accompaniment often happen simultaneously (that is, process-oriented and participant-oriented accompaniment are often fulfilled concurrently) (see Figure 1, for further text examples from our data see Appendix B).

Figure 1:

Types of acompañamiento in the Fundación Huellas.

8 Process-Oriented Accompaniment

Process-oriented accompaniment is related to the intention to transform and empower participants through actions and projects over time. Huellas is characterized as having a constant presence in the localities where it works. It strives to maintain this presence, with volunteer action and university internships, even in periods of funding constraints. The statutes of the Huellas state that its primary purpose is “to generate processes of social, productive, sports-recreational, educational, technological, artistic … [and] community development” (DR20, 2022, p. 1, emphasis added).

9 Participant-Oriented Accompaniment

The participant-oriented accompaniment centers on the explicit population groups for which Huellas directs its mission. These types of accompaniment harmonizes with the process-oriented accompaniment outlined above (see Figure 1).

10 Concluding Remarks

We situate Fundación Huellas’ work into the realities of migration crises and with attention to conversations about localization in development aid. Localization is operationalized through organizational policies, processes, deliverables, and behaviors, taking into account local actors, their perspectives and their knowledge. The case of Huellas shows a local nonprofit responding to migration crisis through its built-in localization practices of accompaniment. The presence of Fundación Huellas in the two neighborhoods has reached now 25 years. This was underlined by staff, volunteers, and participants as one of the most valued aspects of Fundación Huellas by the community, citing examples of other entities arriving temporarily and leaving (due to short term contracts, or moving on to the next funding stream elsewhere).

Huellas’ work was started around serving vulnerable populations who were affected by violence and insecurity, and thereby forced to internally migrate. As a result, it has built local expertise in issues around migration, which has served in its work with the current (Venezuelan) migration crisis. By studying Fundación Huellas’ approach, we bring to the foreground accompaniment, which we find to be an important dimension to localization in the context of migration crises. That is, accompaniment implies ownership and participation but through regular and sustained relationships, producing “accompanied” neighborhoods and communities. We observed that in its work, Huellas did not differentiate between those displaced by the armed conflict in Colombia and the newer Venezuelan migrants present due to the socio-political situation in their country. The inclusion criterion for services responds rather to the condition of vulnerability (often a consequence of displacement and migration). Participation in services of course also was dependent on the willingness of community members to engage in Huellas services and the different types of accompaniment, as all participation with Huellas is voluntary (staff person, personal communication, May 2023).

Our knowledge on migration crises has been dominated by aggregated statistics and Northern actors. However, local nonprofits have a rich history in responding to community needs and serving vulnerable populations when the public and for-profit sectors are absent – as is the case in the outskirts of Medellín. The response of nonprofits to migration crises around the world is evidence of the important role that they play on local and global scales. Of course, as a case study, this article does not seek to generalize its findings to all local nonprofit organizations working in migration crises. However, we contend that its findings can be applied and explored among other local nonprofits working in development aid and migration crises building off our work and the work of Peralta and Vaitkus (2019) and Wilson (2012). The case underlines especially the value of local expertise in issues around migration and the promise of accompaniment in this policy area.

We would like to observe more consideration, documentation, and conceptual development of accompaniment in nonprofit work on migration, particularly in Latin America and other contexts with legacies of colonialism and imperialism, and which have been subject to the project of development. Such cases often remain separate from European and North American examples and perspectives in the literature (see Lewis 2015). Nonprofit studies literature should contribute to understanding how localization particularly intersects with post-colonial conditions. Accompaniment, given its roots in Latin American resistance movements (Farmer 2011), provides a lens to explore how communities and nonprofits determine their own versions of localization, not at all driven by the renewed interest by donors (and scholars) to the topic nor what is à la mode in development practice.

Another area that deserves additional attention, which we have only marginally mentioned (and which Huellas has not been a beneficiary of), is the funding streams and donor commitments to localization. Multilateral and bilateral actors have been slow to implement their own rhetoric. The model of accompaniment essentially requires funding at the local level, as Paul Farmer spiritedly advocated throughout his professional life. Most donors still fall short. However, some funders such as Spirit In Action International, Trickle Up and Thousand Currents are pioneers in development aid as they provide direct funds to local actors that include families, nonprofit organizations, leaders, and social movements. For example, Thousand Current has articulated an accompaniment-way of localization … as it “funds, connects, and walks alongside the people, organizations, and movements that are finding solutions and making waves around the world” (https://thousandcurrents.org/ emphasis added).

As the introduction for this special issue observes, nonprofits engage in and are affected by migration crises in multiple ways. Indeed, the early 21st century, like many other periods of history, has been characterized by migration crises. These situations demand the attention of and are documented by national and international policy makers, media outlets, and international NGOs in all parts of the world. However, governments and their policy decisions and any international donor support are often substandard at the local level. It will be more important to understand (and support) the work of local nonprofit organizations in contexts like Colombia, where migration crises are a wicked problem that need local and supported (or perhaps better said, accompanied) solutions. The UNHCR estimated that “117.2 million people will be forcibly displaced or stateless in 2023” (UNHCR 2023b), suggesting that there will be no shortage of demand for local nonprofit responses and accompaniment like that offered by Huellas.