VERDANT INITIATIVE – SERVICE, CREATIVITY, ACTIVITY

The world is going through the crisis of global warming. Part of it is because of deforestation. This is what inspired me to start a planting initiative called verdant. The word verdant means green with grass or other rich vegetation. In this initiative, those who volunteer would have to plant saplings and send me an image, which I would post on my social media handle.

L2-Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills

in the process

I had to face many challenges and obstacles in this process. Convincing people to plant was one of them. I realised that not many people are willing to make an effort to go and plant a sapling, so I decided that for the first 30 volunteers, I would give them free saplings and deliver it to them. This helped me to increase volunteers, so before the first week itself, I had 50 volunteers. 

L3-plan and initiate a CAS experience

I started to plan this experience and did so for a week. I had to decide how to spread the message, how am I going to convince people, which saplings to give etc. I made a verdant volunteer form for those who would like to volunteer. I made a poster and posted it on my instagram handle so that people get the relevant information.

L4-Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

I started to work on this project in mid-january. Initially I thought that this would go on for a few weeks, but then I decided to continue this. I worked on it the whole february too and the result was that we had planted about a hundred saplings.

L5-Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

I decided to work on this with my cousins and a friend. This has helped me and reduced my workload, and also helped to increase volunteers. For example, it was a tedious and a time consuming task to deliver saplings all by myself, so working with them helped me to accomplish this quickly. We did social media marketing separately which allowed us to get more volunteers.

L6-Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

My initiative is clearly connected with a global issue even though it is on a small scale. Today, we need to conserve trees. The wider goal of verdant is to make people aware about the importance of trees, so that they can understand why it is important to plant and conserve trees. We are all aware that deforestation causes global warming, but what are we doing to solve this problem? Through verdant, people ACTUALLY planted saplings and contributed.

L7-Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

Many people think that their duty is ‘not to harm the environment’, but I believe that if you are not contributing for the benefit of the environment, then you are actually harming it. This is where ethics come. There is nothing wrong if you do not plant saplings, but it is also ethical and correct to do so. This is because it is our morals and values that teach us to worship trees, so is it not our duty and ethics to plant trees and promote it?

This was a meaningful experience for me. It is good to know that when these saplings grow, they will support life in an ecosystem, provide habitat to insects and birds!