Since its establishment, the organisation has been actively engaged in emergency response, disaster risk management, and strengthening community resilience in disaster-prone areas.

[3] It serves as a hub for coordinating, facilitating, and supporting the humanitarian efforts of the Indonesian Catholic Church.

One of the roles of the national office is to offer capacity-building programmes for diocesan Caritas staff and community facilitators.

[2] Caritas Indonesia is known for distributing emergency response aid packages after natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis or volcano eruptions.

[4][5][6][7] In addition to humanitarian relief programmes, Caritas Indonesia is implementing different long-term programmes, including on the topics of community-managed disaster risk reduction,[8] climate change adaptation, health and nutrition, as well as programmes supporting migrants and refugees and combatting human trafficking.