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The era of the ear is here
The era of the ear is here

Could it be that the symbol of this new era of anticipatory action is an… ear? Meaningful change doesn’t tend to come from simplified data stories – the familiar “x number affected” – but from being invited to access the full complexity of lived experience:  uncertainty-driven silence that doesn’t get captured in a survey, intangible losses that can’t be measured, and all the  deep and real reasons a forecast may go ignored by a family in a vulnerable place.

The hardest communities to hear are not always the hardest to reach – though those, too, often also go entirely unheard. To listen, truly, is to widen the circle of who is heard and how they are heard:  in which language? Over what span of time? Who is in the room, and for what purpose?

Are the ingredients in place to create deep connection and sharing? Can we name what those ingredients are?

Formerly called the Dialogue Platform on Forecast-based Financing, the Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action began as a bi-annual global workshop in 2015, organized by the German Red Cross in collaboration with the IFRC and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate, with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office. The Dialogue Platforms provide an interactive, engaging space for the anticipatory action community to share knowledge, best practices, and lessons learned to bring about a fundamental change within the humanitarian system: from reaction to anticipation. 

Participants from the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, governments, NGOs, academia and the private sector come together to discuss how to drive anticipatory action forward; increase the reach of this approach; improve its quality; engage new stakeholders in its implementation and development; and to determine the next steps as we collectively scale up anticipatory action across science, policy, and practice.

Between 2017 and 2025, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Start Network, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Welthungerhilfe (WHH), the Danish Refugee Council, and the Gargaar Relief and Development Organization (GREDO) joined as organizing partners. This is replicated at the annual Regional Dialogue Platforms on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action in the Americas, Africa, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where regional and national partners also join the organizing committee for each event. 

For more details on the previous Global and Regional Dialogue Platforms, we invite you to visit this link.

About the Anticipation Hub

Building on the experience of the Dialogue Platform, commitments to scale up anticipatory action and the increased demand for more collaboration and guidance on the topic, the Anticipation Hub was launched in December 2020 as an initiative of the IFRC, the German Red Cross, and the Climate Centre to provide a more permanent space for learning and exchange beyond the annual Dialogue Platforms. Since its launch, the Hub has acted as the host and convenor of the Dialogue Platforms.

The mission of the Anticipation Hub is to facilitate knowledge exchange, learning, guidance and advocacy for practitioners, scientists and policymakers that supports them to jointly work with at-risk communities to collectively achieve anticipatory action. The Anticipation Hub aims to support practitioners, scientists, and policymakers, to do more anticipatory action, do it better and do it together, to jointly embed a culture of anticipatory action inside and beyond the humanitarian sector.

Aligned with the Anticipation Hub’s 2021-2024 Strategy, the Dialogue Platform embraces the following values:

  • Embracing a people-centred approach

  • Creating shared ownership and inclusiveness

  • Promoting and encouraging diversity

  • Bridging knowledge across science, policy, and practice

  • Stimulating creative and interactive exchange

  • Ensuring accountability