Who should take climate action?

Start with the words. Taking action means doing something to stop a bad situation getting worse or carrying on. It also means doing something to bring a better one about. Both count.

Ask learners to stand in the corner they think should take action on climate change. Anyone torn between two corners can stand between them. Anyone torn between all four can stand in the middle.

Ask the same thing twice more, and let them move each time. Who can do the most about climate change? And: who do companies and politicians actually listen to?

Ask people standing in different places why they chose that spot. Draw out that both ends are true. We can change what we do at home. But the decisions that matter most — how electricity is made, which roads get built, who gets water when there is less of it — are taken by people in office and people running companies. Then put the question this session turns on: who do you influence?

What does it mean to influence somebody? Get the class to: changing the way a person thinks, or what they do.

Ask who influences them. A parent, an elder sister, a teacher, a coach. A cricketer, a film star, a YouTuber they have never met. A brand. A song. Some of these people know them; most do not.

Ask what they are influenced about, and how. A parent decides what is cooked and when the lights go off. A friend decides what is worth doing after school. Somebody on a screen decides what shoes look right. Include WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube in this — most influence now arrives on a phone.

Now turn it round. Ask each learner who they influence.

Give every learner a sheet of paper. Ask them to draw themselves in the middle and, around themselves, every person or group they influence. Nearest the centre, the people they influence most. Furthest out, the people they influence least.

Share the diagrams and talk about them.

Ask how that influence travels. By talking, arguing, forwarding a message, buying something, refusing to buy it. A shop stocks what sells. A ward councillor, an MLA or an MP answers letters, petitions and people who turn up at the office. Then the harder question: does everybody have the same amount of influence? What changes it — age, money, gender, caste, whether anyone in the family has ever spoken to an official before?

What action will we choose?

In small groups, ask learners how they could pass on what they know and get other people to act. At home, in school, in the neighbourhood. And upwards — to a company, the ward office, the municipal corporation, the panchayat, a department of government. Use the climate action ideas to unstick a group that is stuck. OUR ACTION PLAN

Now ask each group — or the whole class — to pick its top three actions.

Push on each one. How hard is this to organise? Who do we need help from? What will get in the way, and how do we get round it? Is any part of it unsafe? How many people would it reach, and how much could each of them change?

Bring the groups back together. Hear every plan, and ask each group why it chose what it chose.