How to Help Colombian Earthquake Victims
The Lupa team is already collaborating with families in Pereira. Here's how to help us do more.
Hey there,
My thoughts are with the people of Colombia. A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the department of Chocó on Monday morning, and rescue teams are still working to reach the hardest-hit areas.
I spent four years living in Bogotá, and when I think back, one of the things that amazed me was how quickly people helped each other when things went wrong. No one needed to organize it. If there was a blackout or a neighbor was having a tough time, someone would start cooking, and others would bring what they could. I've never seen people act faster to help than in Colombia.
This week, the situation is personal for us. Part of our team lives in Pereira, one of the cities most affected by the earthquake. They’re volunteering, giving out free lunches to families who lost their homes, and are buying medical supplies for hospitals that are already overwhelmed. I'll share two ways you can help below: one through an established organization and one directly to our Lupa team members in Pereira.
Two other things worth your attention this week. Washington just made it more expensive to keep an H-1B or L-1 worker on staff, not just to hire one. And a new report on enterprise AI agents shows a lot of companies handing out access nobody would approve if they stopped to think about it.
Let's get into it.
🌐 News Shortlist
1. A 7.4 Earthquake Hit Colombia. Here's How to Actually Help.
Recap: A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia on August 10, with an epicenter in San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, roughly 150 miles west of Bogotá. As of this week, more than 200 people are confirmed dead, over 1,200 are injured, and more than 3,700 remain unaccounted for. The quake was felt across much of the country and into Ecuador and Panama. Cali's mayor said 32 buildings have collapsed there alone, including a large part of a hospital. Colombia's Geological Service called it the strongest earthquake the country has recorded this century. The government has declared a national emergency, and rescue teams are still working through aftershocks to reach the epicenter itself.
I spent four years living in Bogotá, working alongside people there, and I've never met a country that executes harder under pressure. That's the same instinct on display right now, just at a scale no city plans for.
If you want my personal recommendation, there are two honest ways to help right now, and neither one is wrong.
The first is to go through an established institution. Cruz Roja Colombiana, the Colombian Red Cross, has activated its national emergency response and is taking donations directly through its campaign at ayuda.cruzrojacolombiana.org, or by transfer to its verified Davivienda account, 0560 4506 999 649, held under the Sociedad Nacional de la Cruz Roja Colombiana. That money moves through a trained relief network with people already deployed in Chocó, Valle del Cauca, and the other affected departments, and it's the safer choice if you'd rather not send money to an account you can't verify yourself.
The second is more personal, and it's also one of ours. Part of our team lives in Pereira and is volunteering with a restaurant in a relief operation for victims. Every peso sent their way goes straight to ingredients for more free lunches and supplies for hospitals that are stretched past their limit.
Transfers within Colombia (Bre-B): 42096602
From outside Colombia (ACH, United States): account holder Liliana Patricia Rodriguez Soto, account number 963815257949, routing number 043087080, SWIFT SSBAUS32, account type checking, bank SSB Bank, 8700 Perry Hwy, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15237
Advice: If you have Colombian colleagues or candidates in your pipeline right now, give them room. Some of them are checking on family instead of checking their inbox, and that should never be held against them.
2. Washington Just Made It More Expensive to Keep an H-1B Worker, Not Just Hire One.
Recap: On August 10, DHS published a rule expanding the $4,000 H-1B and $4,500 L-1 "9/11 response" fee to cover extension-of-stay petitions, not only new hires and change-of-employer filings. It applies to employers with at least 50 US employees where more than half the US workforce holds H-1B or L-1 status. The fee dates to 2015 and originally funded biometric entry-exit programs, applying only when a visa was first granted or an employee switched companies. The rule takes effect 30 days after publication. It follows an appeals court decision earlier this month blocking the White House's separate proposal for a $100,000 H-1B application fee.
The $100,000 fee got the headlines and then got blocked. This one is smaller, already final, and hits a different moment in the process, which is why it matters more for planning.
Most companies budget for the cost of hiring someone on a visa. Far fewer budget for the cost of keeping that same person once the visa needs renewing. This rule changes that math for the employers most dependent on H-1B and L-1 talent, the ones where more than half the US workforce is already on one of those visas. Every renewal now carries a fee that didn't exist for that filing before, on top of whatever the next round of policy brings.
None of this touches how you build a team in Latin America. A senior engineer or operator you hire in Bogotá or Medellín never needs a visa, never has an extension date, and never becomes more expensive to keep just because a new rule got published. The companies leaning hardest on the visa route are the ones who will feel this compound the most.
Advice: If a meaningful share of your team runs on H-1B or L-1 status, run the true cost of the next three years of renewals against the cost of hiring the same role directly in Latin America. The visa route just got a recurring tax added to it. The nearshore route didn't.
3. 60 Percent of Enterprise AI Agents Have More Access Than They Need.
Recap: A new report from Opsin Labs found that AI agent use inside companies grew fourteenfold between January and June 2026. The average enterprise now runs roughly one agent, live or in draft, for every employee. Sixty percent of agents given access beyond their default settings were granted allow-all permissions rather than access scoped to their actual task, and 60 percent had capabilities that had grown past what they were originally built to do. Two out of three agents are built by employees without an engineering background, in sales, customer success, and operations, often faster than security teams can review what they're allowed to touch.
Weirdly, I have to say this about my own industry, but a human interviews every candidate before we present them to a client. I mention it because most of the software built to automate hiring skips exactly that step, and this report shows the same pattern happening everywhere else companies are handing work to agents.
The numbers describe a predictable failure mode. Someone in operations builds an agent to solve a real problem, gives it broad access because that's the fastest way to get it working, and nobody revisits that access once the agent proves useful. Multiply that by one agent per employee, and you have a company that granted itself a security problem in the name of moving fast.
The fix isn't to slow down on AI. It's the same discipline this newsletter argues for in hiring: keep a human checkpoint on anything that acts on your behalf, whether that's a recruiter's shortlist or an agent with access to your customer data. The companies that skip that step in hiring end up with bad placements. The companies that skip it with agents end up with a breach.
Advice: Before you approve an agent's access, ask whether a person would sign off on that same access if a stranger walked up and asked for it directly. If the answer is no, the agent shouldn't have it either.
That is it for this week.
Colombia is facing a real crisis, and the most useful thing you can do right now is donate. Washington just made the visa route to US talent more expensive to maintain, not only to start, which is one more reason to build directly in the region instead. And the AI agent numbers are a reminder that the same human-in-the-loop discipline we use in hiring belongs everywhere else you're putting these tools to work.
The trends that move first are the ones worth watching now. That's what this newsletter is here for. It's also what we help clients with every week at lupahire.com.
Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa