Greening Your Hands

The crisis of the environment is a social crisis. We created the problem and so we must create the solution. Our world needs to be supported to support us and respected enough to be enabled to flourish. Project GreenHands has discovered that caring for and planting saplings opens human hearts and catalyzes the necessary reawakening to the natural world. An astounding 4.5 Million saplings were planted across Tamil Nadu in the last planting season (Nov07-Jan08)

“I couldn’t pull off a leaf now, and I couldn’t break a branch”
Archana, Coimbatore Volunteer

“Now that I have cared for the saplings, forests feel like family. I just want to sit with the trees ”
Revathi, Kadam Kulum Volunteer

There are so many ways that you can join the movement. Tiny saplings become fruit trees, medicine trees, timber trees, fodder and shade trees that transform the lives of rural villagers and farmers. Being part of a movement that changes lives for the better will change your own life.

“When suffering and helplessness changes to hope, and then to willingness, and then to action, there are no words to describe what it feels like to be part of that transformation. It’s like watching people choose to start living again.”
Gayathri, Gobichettipalayam Volunteer

When you volunteer, you become part of a family that is actively living in service. It is freeing, heart warming and humbling to be part of a culture of such open generosity and joyfulness.

“Volunteering is infectious. Once you start it feels like the only logical thing to do, and the only way to be.”
Marie, Project Coordinator

“I have never worked so hard or felt so fulfilled. I was so full of energy that I couldn’t sleep, and yet I should have been exhausted”
Maheshwari, Isha volunteer

Volunteers have done incredible things. Planting trees to save the environment makes such clear sense to people that once they are inspired, the sky is literally the limit.

“One lawyer gave up his job and organised the planting of 6.5Lakh throughout almost 300 villages. A single farmer mobilized 500 others to grow and plant saplings collectively and an inspired NGO helped woman self help groups in 60 villages to plant 10Lakh in a single day” Vijay, Pondicherry Team leader

“It is as if people have been waiting for this. Suddenly it is alive in them and they become unstoppable. It is different for everyone, but it is clear that participating in this cannot leave one untouched. Everyone catches the GreenHands bug in some way, which is good because we need them to!”
Anand, Project Coordinator

There are so many ways to give. In-kind donations have enabled vast amounts of planting to be achieved. People offer transport, people cook, people offer accommodation, make introductions, hold events, offer skills for public speaking or design, people give sand or soil or places to build nurseries, people involve their local schools, or students, talk to community leaders, gather the media and write articles. If we are to green India then we will need all of our gifts, all of our hearts and all of our willingness to really feel what this world would be like if we didn’t wake up and take the action that is needed now.

“When the need out there is greater than the fear in here, finally I can take the actions that I would usually be too afraid to take. I am out there doing things I wouldn’t have dreamt about a year ago, because I am doing them for the planet, because without her, we are gone”
Claire, UK Volunteer