Colombian faith-based organisations rescue and distribute food to millions, enjoy trusted community access, generate actionable data, and operate replicable territorial models. However, they remain sidelined from national policy, monitoring systems, and predictable funding.
In community halls, churches, and temples throughout Colombia, congregation volunteers keep records of the number of children arriving for daily meals, noting which neighbourhoods and age groups are most affected by hunger and malnutrition. Unfortunately, their meticulous lists, full of local insight, rarely make it into official statistics. To understand why and how this could change, this study examined how faith-based organisations contribute to food and nutrition security in Colombia and documented their extensive local reach as well as their absence from national systems that guide national policy and financing. Through an extensive literature review, interviews, and field visits in Bogotá and Antioquia, the research identified how these actors, often seen as trusted local partners, generate valuable data and pilot territorial coordination models. The findings could inform discussions with Colombian authorities, religious networks and international partners on how to translate the country’s Global Alliance commitments into more sustainable, inclusive action.
Faith-based organisations provide sustained support to vulnerable communities throughout the country, including in conflict–affected areas that other actors cannot reach. They also produce locally grounded data and have developed territorial models that experts point to as practical pilots. During and after the COVID-19 period, religious networks coordinated parish, diocesan, and inter-congregational efforts that reached hundreds of thousands of households and distributed more than five million kilograms of food. With more than 260,000 paid employees and over 1,700,000 volunteers, faith-based organizations can maintain household registers, track household composition and dietary needs, staff food banks and community kitchens, and provide targeted accompaniment and psychosocial support in local outreach programmes. Yet these databases and monitoring practices do not flow into national monitoring systems (for example, OSAN and SIVIGILA remain mostly unlinked to faith-sector reporting), and most FBO activities operate off-budget or under short-term contracts, limiting continuity and sustainability. As one interviewee stated: “We reach places where the State doesn’t arrive, but our data stops at the parish gate. Nobody asks for it.”
“We reach places where the State doesn’t arrive, but our data stops at the parish gate. Nobody asks for it.”
In Antioquia, a departamento known for its economic and cultural contrasts as well as its social innovation, the study identified how inter-institutional collaboration through the Departmental Commission on Food and Nutrition Security (Mesa Departamental SAN) and the Departamental Committee on Religious Affairs, formally recognised the role of faith-based organizations in local food systems and mapped thousands of faith-based community initiatives.
Government officials interviewed at the departmental and municipal levels reported that the cooperation with religious institutions improved the reach in rural and peri-urban municipalities where administrative coverage is limited, which led to a reduction of 75% in deaths of five-year-olds due to malnutrition. Interviewees also emphasized that Antioquia’s experience demonstrates how faith networks can contribute not only through distribution, but most importantly through data generation, targeting, and social accompaniment, which can be a reference for other departments. Replicating this model at national scale would require standardised mechanisms and protocols for information-sharing, joint monitoring, and predictable co-financing arrangements that could link local practice with Colombia’s current commitments under the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty.
At the national level, clear coordination gaps were found that limit the faith sector’s contribution to national food and nutrition systems. Subnational characterisation remains incomplete and most faith-sector activity operates with limited budgets or unpredictable financial resources, frequently through short-term contracts. This reduces continuity and makes planning difficult. Uneven adoption of promising sub–national models, inactive government portals for micro-grant initiatives, and legal or administrative bottlenecks – such as tax, procurement, and fiduciary concerns – discourage formal contracts with faith actors.
To address these gaps, it is recommended that:
- Formal pilot agreements in one or two departments are established, converting existing memoranda into predictable, multi-year financing windows with very light MEAL requirements and predictable disbursements to manage fiduciary risk.
- The Ministry of Health, DANE, and OSAN, together with a neutral technical partner, should launch a rapid co-design and validation process to develop a small, faith-sensitive indicator set (for example, beneficiaries served, nutritional equivalence of distributed food, and programme continuity metrics). These indicators should be integrated into local OSAN observatories.
- A PaRD-supported Knowledge Bank is established, standardising a light, publishable MEAL package with templates, legal guidance, and procurement tools. This Bank could also include other flagship projects, for example, those in Nigeria and Indonesia.
- Measures are taken to enable smaller FBOs to form departmental consortia, allowing them to comply with accountability standards, and access co-financing without losing autonomy.
Integrating faith-based organizations more systematically into Colombia’s national food and nutrition security architecture would strengthen data reliability, expand service delivery, and reinforce the country’s progress toward its Global Alliance commitments. By formalizing cooperation and embedding faith-sector data and models into public monitoring systems, Colombia can transform localized best practices into scalable national policies ensuring that community-led innovation contributes directly to sustainable, inclusive development outcomes.
Author: Andres Martinez, contractor for the flagship and JLI LAC regional coordinator
