It had started when I, Arnab Chakraborty was 10yrs old and was studying in a boarding school called Birla Vidya Mandir, Nainital. My science teacher, Mr Pant used to say –
“Plant 9 trees to balance all the oxygen that you will use and all the carbon dioxide that you will exhale”
That one line gave birth to something in me
– a want and a passion to make the world a greener place.
After years of that not planting a single tree in spite of wanting to do so, the project finally started.
I talked to all my friends and got a group of 4 – Sumantra Bhattacharya, Rahul Ujjainwal, Ratnesh Amarnath and myself(to start with), who acted as the core group as advisors in the project. Further we found some people in the Facebook, who had similar interests in planting trees. We were a team of 14 people who participated in the project.
Once the participants were finalized, we started out to chalk the steps of the project. We also took care of the nitty-gritties of planting trees, making sure that they all survive(100% survival rate), against a government (Indian govt. Source:Delhigreens, http://delhigreens.org/) reported survival rate of 10%.
Key participants of the project were Monika Srivastav, Mahasweta, Nandita Anand (SMR creators) who planted and contributed to the project. They facilitated the planting of a total of more than 300 trees out of which I sincerely speculate, all are alive till today.*
We all went through fire facing and solving a lot of challenges, such
as acquiring the saplings of the trees, finding land to plant trees etc.
We learned a ton.
Learning -
We all want to live in a Greener planet but just wait for someone to plant them for us.
Everybody, even the govt asks if we represent an organization such as an NGO.
We gotta register an NGO, to have a significant impact on the environment.
Let GO.
