Right here, right now

homeMaking a difference. Democracy, Law and Citizenship.

Now that you have seen how others have taken action at a local, state or federal level, it’s time for you to take action right here, right now. Your task is to design an appropriate action plan to influence the decision-making process for an important community issue. It can be an issue involving any level of government.

Is there anything going on right now in your local community that is causing you concern? If you are stuck for ideas click on the images. One is of a rural scene and one is of an urban scene. Both contain numerous community issues at different levels of government, if you can’t think of a community issue the images might give you an idea.

toolkit

Rural or urban issues

If you can't think of a community issue click on the images, they might give you some ideas. Text version (.pdf 212kB)

rural scene

urban scene
Design an action plan

An action plan is a plan with an outline of steps on the action you will take in regard to a particular issue.

You use action plans in your everyday life all the time – it’s just that you don’t actually call them that! For example if you are going to the beach on the weekend you might organise what time you will wake up, the place and time you will meet at and how you will get there. This is an action plan for going to the beach.

For this task it is no different, you are planning what actions you will take for a particular community issue. You might start with writing a letter. If the issue is not resolved what will your next action be, and so forth. Sometime issues are solved at the first step but it is best to be prepared and have a course of action planned out.

  1. The first thing you must do is decide what level of government it involves. Text version (.pdf 204kB)

  2. Research the issue. Clearly identify the following;

    • Why is it a local/state/federal issue?

    • What happened?

    • Who is involved?

    • Who is affected by this?

  3. Plan your action. Make a list of the actions you will take. Consider the actions used in the local, federal and state case studies. Use the active citizen toolkit at the top of this page to help you.

  4. Carry out the planned actions. Perhaps you can’t actually complete this part. However, if one of your steps in the action plan is to write a letter to an MP you could do this and email it to your teacher.

  5. If you have taken action, monitor and report on the issue. If you did not take any action, research another issue, monitor and report on the political process used.

It is important to remember that you may not always get the answer you wish. However, if it is something that you feel strongly about, keep the issue alive by constantly bringing it to the attention of the public and politicians.