Long before the term anticipatory action came to be, communities were embracing its tenets. The village, the informal settlement, and the group on the move have long woven this basket-like resilience around themselves: strands of mutual aid, local governance, intergenerational oral histories, and informal early warnings.
The strength of these baskets lies in relationships, since anticipation happens relationally and is always site-specific. They have often held communities through floods, price shocks, conflict, loss. Yet the word community itself is slippery, used so casually or vaguely in professional spaces that it can lose meaning, even as in real places it remains vivid, lived, and irreplaceable.
Donor programs may add new reeds or grass to the basket, but they are adding to existing handiwork. The work now is not to invent the basket, but to recognize, strengthen, and uplift what is already there.
Please contact dialogueplatform@anticipation-hub.org
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