Anticipatory action aims to prevent and/or mitigate the impact of shocks and stresses on vulnerable households through different prevention and mitigation measures applied in relation to a warning or trigger and before the foreseen shock occurs or its impacts are felt. However, acting early is no guarantee that all at-risk and affected members of a community benefit equally from anticipatory action. People’s vulnerability, or their ability to cope with and recover from disasters, largely depends on social, economic, cultural, and political factors – all of which can vary within a community. The active inclusion of at-risk and potentially affected communities is yet to be integrated systematically into the approaches and frameworks conducted by anticipatory action, and disaster risk management stakeholders more generally. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations embarked on a Community Engagement in Anticipatory Action project to capture emerging and good practices to improve community engagement in anticipatory action. Building on the experience in four pilot countries, Bangladesh, Guatemala, the Niger and Zimbabwe, this project aims to ensure that FAO and other stakeholders are equipped to facilitate a more inclusive and bottom-up approach to anticipatory action programming that reflects and leverages the perspectives, priorities, knowledge and capacities of at-risk and potentially affected communities.