The Anticipatory Action team at Save the Children—led by Lisa Butenhoff, Head of Anticipatory Action
Today we’re shining a spotlight on the work of Lisa Butenhoff and the Anticipatory Action team at Save the Children, one of the world’s leading child rights organizations. Save the Children is working on mainstreaming anticipatory action into systems and approaches to programming—with a specific focus on how children’s needs and perspectives can be better integrated—and learning a lot in the process.
1. Tell us about anticipatory action in Save the Children and why it is important.
Save the Children has committed to reducing the risks of predictable crises on children. Building on a long history of child-centred disaster risk reduction (DRR) and work on early action for food crises, we’ve been mainstreaming anticipatory action (AA) as an approach over the past two years. This started with stepping back to think about our added value as a Child Rights Organization working in the humanitarian, development and climate spaces. Our resulting Anticipatory Action Framework outlines a flexible and contextualized approach to AA within a wider scope of disaster risk management that builds both on DRR and emergency preparedness and can be integrated into strategy and action at multiple levels.
What does this look like in practice? In 2023, we used the forecasted El Niño to really look at what guidance and support would support effective early action. We engaged around 25 countries in planning and learned a lot! First of all, we need to strengthen and systematize capacities and partnerships for risk monitoring and particularly working with and helping to improve weather and climate information—with climate service providers at the top of the list. Secondly, we can work better across our own organization to link climate and humanitarian capacity in support of early action. There is ample space to work on more mainstreamed and sustainable approaches to child-centred and community-led AA. Lastly, it’s much trickier to resource early action than response. Save the Children has committed 10-15% of our Humanitarian Fund to risk-informed preparedness and anticipatory action (around USD 33 million over the past three years). This has been a huge asset. However, most donors don’t have straightforward mechanisms for resourcing early action.
2. What else has Save the Children been doing on anticipatory action?
Making sure the early warning/early action space puts children at the centre is a priority for Save the Children. We believe that anticipatory action plans must consider the differential needs of children and also leverage children’s own knowledge and capacities to be more effective. In the last year, we’ve developed Anticipatory Action: A Child-Centred Guide and are currently piloting training for country teams and partners to accompany this. We’ve developed basic Guidance for Anticipatory Action in Education and developed and tested Guidance on Coordinated Anticipatory Action in Education with the Education Cluster. This summer we worked with four country teams to test guidance for Child Protection in Anticipatory Action and mainstream Child Protection into AA plans. Likewise, our engagement in the Early Warnings for All initiative and with climate services is about putting children in the centre. We’re working with country teams to understand opportunities for engaging to make Early Warning plans and policies more child-centred, and this year released Child Centered Early Warning Systems: Examples and Good Practice. For the past year, Save the Children, alongside the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), the World Food Programme (WFP), and Germany, has been a core member of the Anticipatory Action Caucus within the Grand Bargain to advance political commitments for scaling anticipatory action by increasing funding, improving coordination, and empowering local actors. This initiative builds on the Getting Ahead of Disasters Charter with a focus on growing funding and improving collaboration and learning in the humanitarian space.
3. How has being a REAP Partner helped you scale up your work?
REAP is unique in that it brings together climate actors, donors, governments, humanitarians, innovators and others in the same place. Convening this breadth of perspectives makes for interesting discussions as well as useful collaboration. REAP has been an invaluable forum for information and is our go-to place for learning about what is going on with funding, policy and action in the broader early warning early action space. The REAP Secretariat has helped us on multiple occasions when we’ve had questions about what’s going on, understanding who’s doing what and helping us link into larger initiatives. Monthly meetings are packed with relevant information which we share widely across the organization. Opportunities to collaborate on collective advocacy and influencing, for instance on the Getting Ahead of Disasters Charter, have been invaluable. Our work has also benefited from the working groups and initiatives led by REAP, including social protection, early warnings, and crisis modifiers.
4. What do you see as the next 1-2 priorities to tackle so that we can take early action to scale?
To scale early action effectively, one of the top priorities is securing dedicated and sustainable funding streams, especially as humanitarian funding continues to shrink. We must shift our focus to inclusive financing mechanisms that empower local actors, recognizing the untapped capacity within communities. Local actors (including communities and children themselves!) are best positioned to identify what early actions will work and should lead these discussions. To enable this, we need innovative financing, planning and coordination solutions that provide direct access to resources for local actors, reducing bureaucratic barriers and ensuring they can act swiftly in times of need.
It's critical that we integrate anticipatory action into broader risk-informed approaches, embedding it across humanitarian, development, and climate work and ensuring that the foundation is national and community-led systems. Viewing early action as a core element of planning systems rather than an isolated approach will help unlock funding and enable more coordinated, inclusive interventions. Strengthening partnerships between humanitarian and climate sectors is also essential, ensuring that we work together to prepare and act early in response to crises.