From action.RAN.org

Pillar exercise adapted from a People Power training developed by George Lakey (http://www.trainingforchange.org/)

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Purpose: Students will develop tactics that they could potentially carry out in the context of a greater movement to effectively stop climate change.

Age or Grade Level: 5th grade and above. Great for high school and college groups looking to decide what to work on.

Time: Approximately one hour (20 minutes if you only do the pillar exercise)

Materials: A blanket or whatever you happen to have in your room that 5 participants could hold up at the same time (you could use a chair or a bench, or even a sweatshirt), something large to write on, the greenhouse gases and their sources factsheet, the Making it Happen worksheet.

Procedure:

1. THE PILLAR EXERCISE: Hold up your blanket or other object and explain to the participants that this object represents climate change and that we will be figuring out who or what is supporting it. These supporters are the "pillars" holding up climate change. Climate change is caused by human actions. If no one did anything at all that emitted greenhouse gases, climate change wouldn't exist anymore.
2. Referring to the page of greenhouse gases and their sources talk through the primary sources, one by one, asking participants what groups or institutions these sources come from. As a group is identified, ask for someone to come up in front of the class and hold up a part of a blanket and represent that group, ie. Ms. Coal Company. Get at least 4-6 clear groups. Examples include: automakers, coal companies, banks that fund coal companies, your school, oil companies, logging companies, housebuilding companies, the government, the military, cement factories, agribusiness, etc.
3. Ask the remaining people not under the blanket to think about things that could be done to get those groups to drop the blanket, one at a time. What could we do, for example to get the automakers to stop supporting climate change? An obvious answer is to get them to make more fuel efficient cars. Once someone proposes an answer such as this, ask for more details, HOW would we get the automakers to make more fuel efficient cars? This is where we begin to talk about projects. Following this example, students might say, “write letters, talk to dealerships, educate people, refuse to buy a car with low gas mileage and tell others to do the same etc.” Write (or have a volunteer write) each idea on the board. After you get a handful of good ideas, go back to the person who is representing that specific group you are addressing and ask if they think that is enough pressure to drop their support of climate change (stop emitting so much CO2). If it is, ask them to drop the blanket and step down. Go through the same questioning for each person holding up the blanket until the blanket drops, and you have all simulated climate stabilization!
4. PROJECT DEVELOPMENT (for a more complete project development hand-out, see the Making it Happen worksheet): Ask participants which of the groups that are currently supporting climate change they feel like they can have the most impact on, or which would make the most strategic sense to work on. After a short brainstorm, form groups based on interest. Your group, or you, may decide to all work together on one, or you may decide to work in small groups on each.
   1. Choose project length: Are people interested in a project that takes a week, a month, a semester, a year?
   2. Long term goals, medium term goals, short term goals: Once you have established how much time you have to work with, have each group come up with some goals. The long term goals are always something along the lines of “A great climate for generations to come”, The medium term goal is the impact on the specific industry or institution that has been chosen, for example “Stop the construction of new Coal Fired Power Plants” and the short term goal is something that is measurable and achievable, that can be completed in the allocated time period. For example, get 200 signatures from students asking CitiBank to fund green energy instead of coal by Nov. 1st.
   3. Investigate: What does your group need to know in order to achieve its short term goal? Does it need to know how to get permission to set up a table at lunch? Does it need to know who in the school’s administration would be most supportive of their ideas? What information do group members need to have in order to write a good article or answer questions when talking to people? Have each group write up a list of questions. When the list is complete, have each group go back over the list and assign a name and a date due for each research task.
   4. Action Plan: The groups are now ready to create their action plan. Each project has ideas for specific tasks to achieve a goal, however many important details have been left out- as each school is different. So based on the suggested tasks, have students think through each one in more detail to come up with additional tasks and logistics, and have them plot it out in a table with the following headings:

Task / Date to complete by / Name of person responsible

Extensions: Celebrate and Evaluate!

At the specified due date, come back together and ask each group to reflect on the following components of their project:

1. How did the group work together? Did everyone participate in the same amounts or did some people do more work than others?
2. How were decisions made? Did people work by consensus? Did they vote? Did some people take leadership roles and make decisions that they felt would be the best for everyone else?
3. How effective did they feel the project was? Did it make a difference for the world? Do they want to do more?
4. What would they do differently if they could do it over again?
5. What worked? What was great about it?
6. After reflecting on each of these questions for 10-20 minutes in their groups, have them come back together as a class and have each group present their project to everyone else- both what it was, and their reflection on it.
7. Post up the classrooms actions on the web! Either have each group write about what they did, or write a short summary for the RYSE or RAN website and send to Levana.