Both the guidebook and this website are organized by the Five Steps of Action, the foundation of the YACH framework. These five steps create a logical guideline for completing a successful project. Groups should go through this model before beginning a project to understand how the five steps work together in a variety of ways, as the model demonstrates below. While there are five steps, the project should always begin with Pre-Planning to set the stage for a successful project.

Click to download the Five Steps of Action Handout.

1. Choose Your Battle. Youth start by identifying the issues they are passionate to make people aware of. In this step, they explore how an issue affects them and others, who their allies are in raising awareness, and how they can motivate their peers.
2. Raise Awareness and Engage Others. After identifying their issue, youth actively search out other supporters, learn effective ways to communicate about their chosen issue, and think creatively about how they will increase awareness in the designated community.
3. Make Your Action Plan. This is a time for youth to listen and explore ideas, consider the pros and cons of different approaches, learn about and practice compromise, and get creative about possible actions they could take to address the issue.
4. Implement Your Plan. Whether the youth have decided to organize an event, hold a sit-in, share an educational video, or any of a wide variety of possible actions, it is time to put their plan into motion. This is the time to take action. If things don’t go to plan, you may have to revisit step 1 and 2 of the process.
   
5. Evaluate Your Plan. Reflection must follow action to ensure that the youth assess their successes and areas that could have gone better, learn from their experience, and be able to apply what they’ve learned to future efforts. Evaluation happens throughout these five steps.