Agfoye flood response
Start Fund flood response in Somalia © Islamic Relief

Start Fund anticipation

The Start Fund enables members to take anticipatory action before the impacts of crises take place, preventing or reducing their humanitarian impact.

Crisis anticipation enables Start Network members and partners to proactively take action when there is a forecast of an impending crisis. By raising an anticipation alert to the Start Fund and acting early, we can save lives, prevent losses and reduce costs.

Members can use forecasts of events, and predictions about their impact, to raise a Start Fund anticipation alert. This lets communities and organisations prepare in advance for a crisis and begin responding early, so reducing the impact.

The Start Fund is open to all types of crisis for anticipation alerts. Anticipation alerts have been raised for flooding, heatwaves, cold waves, conflict and displacement, disease outbreaks, drought, volcanic activity and tropical cyclones.

How it works

Anticipatory alerts follow the same process as a response alert, following the Alert Cycle of decision making, action, learning and reporting.

The difference is that the alerts are based on emerging risks (and ways to mitigate their impact) rather than a crisis that is already happening.

This means that the information gathering and risk analysis ahead of raising an alert, and the actions taken when implementing an anticipatory alert project, are different from traditional response alerts. 

Support for members

Start Network’s Anticipatory Action Service Offer support to Start Network members with guidance, resources, capacity strengthening support and grants to help them make best use of timely, reliable risk information. 

The Start Network team provides technical guidance support, including feedback on anticipation alert notes. Contact anticipation@startprogrammes.org for more information.

Start Network resources include pre-alert guidance notes, regular risk bulletins, learning and case studies.

Regular trainings and refreshers on Crisis Anticipation and the Start Fund are available. Crisis Anticipation and Action is a self-guided online course to build understanding of crisis anticipation and writing a quality anticipation alert. 

Anticipating  a  crisis  often  requires  information,  forecast  and  data  analysis  tools.  Start Network offers  grants for  Start  Network  members (and their technical partners) to develop data tools to support their anticipatory work. 

Download Anticipatory Tool Grant information note

Download Analysis for Action Grant information note

Start Fund: Anticipation Alerts

conference table

FOREWARN

FOREWARN is a community that provides this support to humanitarians on the ground, and also advocates for early action to become the norm.

In 2016, the Start Fund officially began its anticipation work. This allows Start Network members and their partners to quickly access funding and run projects that save lives – before a disaster strikes. FOREWARN aims to quickly bring together the right people to predict disasters and support humanitarians closest to an anticipated crisis.

Learn more

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Related resources

This handbook details the procedures which govern the use and allocation of the Start Fund

Anticipatory alerts we responded to

Live alerts
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People reached
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Live Alerts
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        Alerts will show here after an allocation decision has been made. Members, donors and partners must login above to see new alerts. Please note, alerts to the Start Fund Bangladesh have alert IDs beginning with 'B'.