The Santo Domingo Foundation has been a school of social development for more than six decades in Colombia. It was born with an ambition greater than facing situations through assistance programs: its objective is to build the future by transforming generations. The seed was planted in the 1960s as a project of the Santo Domingo family, renowned businessmen in the fields of food, media and retailamong others, to promote the development of Barranquilla. Over the decades, it has become a national strategy.
Since 2016 it has been led by José Francisco Aguirre, 42 years old, originally from Bogota, with more than 15 years of experience in managing social projects. From an early age, this industrial engineer understood that inequalities are resolved with long-term projects capable of transforming generations. “I grew up in Cajicá (Cundinamarca), among crops, sheds and horses. My mother was a florist and my father made industrial boots. I traveled with my mother through cultures and what interested me most was the lives of the people, how they lived, the problems of their children. My maternal grandfather left us a legacy of social awareness. He owned land in Altos de Cazucá (Soacha, Cundinamarca) and dedicated his life until he was 95 years old – to legalize properties, build schools and organize communities,” he recalls.
Aguirre is clear in his philosophy at the head of the Foundation: “We cannot do it alone. Neither the State alone, nor the private sector, nor philanthropy alone. Structural challenges require uniting, coordinating and persisting.” This conviction guides the organization’s most profound urban, educational, health and environmental projects. “It’s not about giving, it’s about transforming and investing with a specific objective to demonstrate that you can have both social impact and sustainability,” he explains.
The Foundation’s most ambitious commitment is made in social housing for the transformation of territories. In Cartagena, he manages and articulates the construction of a city within the city. 380 hectares, 50,000 planned housing units and an accommodation capacity between 15 and 20% of the population of the capital of Bolívar. Aguirre bluntly defines the meaning of the project called Ciudad de Bicentenario: “these mega-neighborhoods are engines of social mobility, not of well-being”. Currently, around 4,100 homes have already been built and house more than 16,000 people.
Unlike other models, this one doesn’t just focus on building houses. It has urban planning, with schools, health centers, sports areas and businesses created to generate jobs. “Giving housing is easy; building a community takes science, patience and trust,” insists Aguirre. Last November, the construction of the Child Development Center (CDB) was completed, in the heart of the Bicentenario, to provide care and attention to 200 children, in a joint effort with the Cartagena City Hall, the Ministry of Housing and Findeter. The model includes direct support to families, employment training and support for local entrepreneurship.
Barranquilla has its own chapter: Villas de San Pablo is the second megadistrict promoted by the foundation, with 18,000 social housing projects planned. In addition, it includes emblematic cultural and recreational infrastructures, such as the Fabrique Culturelle, which is part of the recreational complex of the district where the Seine is present. It also has a school and a recreational and sports park.
There, leaders like Judith Payares saw the social fabric strengthened. He says that since his arrival in this megadistrict, his leadership has been strengthened. At first, she was part of the security front with Iván Hernández, her husband. Later, they jointly led initiatives for the well-being of the elderly. Her greatest pride is to have been selected by the European Union and the GenerACTOR program to carry out an exchange of experiences and good environmental practices in Rome, Italy. “I run Huerteritos, a program that trains 75 boys, girls and young people as guardians of the neighborhood environment. One of my big projects for 2026 is to implement a hydroponic growing system as a sustainable technique that adapts to homes. My dream is that it can become a food solution for the community,” he says.
“The Foundation has endangered a large part of its assets with these projects. They will be recovered in the future and reinvested in other tasks,” says Aguirre, before launching a reflection that defines its objective: “Social investment improves the lives of entire generations”.
Multiply capabilities to fill gaps
The issues go beyond town planning. In education, another of their essential areas of work, they promote an unprecedented model: an evidence laboratory that evaluates projects with technical rigor to know what works and what needs to be reproduced or corrected. “Colombia invests billions in education without measuring results. We rely on evidence, not trends,” says Aguirre. 14 territories are part of this laboratory. They finance and scale successful projects developed by educational communities. “We have an investment of almost 70 million dollars. It is perhaps the project with the most private resources that Colombia has today to innovate in the public education sector,” explains its director.
Another example of working with Impacto Colectivo Barú 2030, a collective created in 2022 and led by the foundation as the main investor, along with eight other organizations. They seek to transform the social, economic and environmental conditions of the island, in the department of Bolívar, where, as the project director, Arsenio Daza, explains, there are social realities that require immediate intervention. “Only 60% of the population has access to the aqueduct and there is no sewage system,” he explains. The group promotes public and private sector coordination to accelerate the resolution of these historic gaps.
So far, the project has benefited 1,382 people, 90% of them through educational programs that support the island’s four schools and build the capacity of community mothers. “Another of the most innovative contributions is the implementation of the first Payments for Education Results pilot project with the Canadian Embassy,” explains Daza. “It’s about improving math and literacy skills. If students achieve the goals, the international financier rewards the investment made to create a sustainable fund and continue to strengthen education on the island.”
The list of projects could be endless: from environmental actions to protect the jaguar corridor – key for the conservation of the regions where this feline still lives – to the construction of the headquarters of the Santa Fe Clinic in the Coffee region, or the report that is about to be published on the long-term initiatives promoted during the pandemic. The traces of six decades of work of the Santo Domingo Foundation show that its work does not attack the symptoms: it intervenes on the causes, builds systems and multiplies capacities. Today, we can say that the territories where it operates are transforming by bridging gaps that, in other circumstances, would take generations to bridge.
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