Movement Green
Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. — Warren Buffett
The purpose of the green movement is to make people aware of the importance of plants for the environment not just by our words but by our actions. For that we needed volunteers to create a chain of awareness and these volunteers could help us on the plantation. So, we started a ‘call for volunteers’ drive on 19 May and till now about 50 people registered themselves as volunteers for movement green. These volunteers are convincing their friends to be a volunteer of Movement Green to create a chain. Also, these volunteers are sending us their pictures with plants so that it may inspire others to plant trees.
To convince people to plant trees is not possible if they are not aware of the importance of plants for our environment. So, we decided to arrange a webinar on “Importance of plants for the environment” on Saturday, 29 May to inform people to plant trees. For this webinar, we arranged six guest speakers including a female speaker from Egypt. All the six speakers were renowned personalities and each of them briefly discussed the importance of plants. Through proper planning and management, we were able to organize this event successfully with 100 participants.
The purpose of Movement Green is to make people aware of plants so that they may take initiative by themselves and not only plant trees but also take care of them. So, we asked our volunteers to plant at least one tree plant at their home, community, or any nearby park, take a picture with it and send the picture in our WhatsApp group so that it may inspire others to plant trees. We have received many pictures from our volunteers while planting trees and we are sharing these pictures on our social media platforms so that they may inspire as many people as possible.
We also conducted a survey among webinar participants about how much they are aware of the significance of plantation. Our survey consists of questions related to the environment and plants. By this survey, we can easily quantify the awareness about plantation significance.
We realized that it would be a tough job for most people to buy a tree plant and then plant it. So, we decided that we would be giving plants to the people in our community as a gift so that they may plant them and take care of them by themselves. When they plant trees, others may also get inspired by them and start planting trees. We need funds to buy and gift plants to others. We started fundraising for Movement Green on 11th May and approached several organizations working on the green revolution for sponsorship. In fundraising, we didn’t achieve enough success because people’s response toward the funding call was approximately none, but we got a sponsor inspired by the webinar that we arranged to create a website for this project. We are approaching people in our circles and organizations to support us in this project.
Challenges and solutions
With time we are experiencing different challenges as a team and also as individuals. One of the major challenges we faced was the arrangement of guest speakers as we wanted people who are well qualified and skilled in their respective fields. One of our team members is an environmental sciences student we connect with her teacher to be our guest speaker. In addition to this, one of our participants uses his connections to invite Ammar Jafri (founder of Digital Pakistan) to be our guest speaker.
To make sure of the presence of chief guests in the webinar was also a challenge for us, as all of them had strict time schedules. We overcome this problem by setting reminders through emails and WhatsApp messages. We even did calls a night before the webinar and confirmed their presence. It was quite hectic but we divided up different tasks indifferent team members so that things went well.
We could easily assemble 50–60 people from our network to join the webinar but our team set a target of 250–300 people so that our message could be conveyed to a larger audience. So, we started a chain through our volunteers of collecting ten people each and then spreading this message to the next audience, and by the grace of Allah we accomplished our goal and our webinar was a house full even though many people who registered could not join it.
As neither speaker had much time nor the audience was ready for the webinar, we really worked hard on time management. It was a challenge to assemble all guest speakers on a single time slot then even during the webinar providing time to each speaker so that they can convey their message that too in a concise way was really hard. We tried our best to keep the webinar within 1 to 1.5 hours so that the audience doesn’t get bored and listens to all points actively.
Our team really works on different strategies to overcome the challenge of doing a well-managed and good seminar. For this, our leader divides different tasks into different team members according to their strengths and we make sure to have a backup for every task. Some were working on the front page and others were working behind the curtains but as a good team, we managed all aspects in such a good way that every guest speaker gave us overwhelming feedback.
We couldn't have access to the Zoom premium account, but again we used our connections, and finally, we found a collaboration who was agreed to give us a zoom premium account and we did our webinar on that. It was all due to the team efforts that we faced these challenges with so much patience and also overcame them.
Any change in our approach
Initially, we decided that our first webinar date will be 20 May but we postponed our webinar from 20 May to 29 May because of the unavailability of speakers. We searched for many speakers but no one made a commitment with us to come to the webinar. So we decided to postpone our webinar till searching for speakers.
At the start, we were only focusing on national speakers with basic knowledge of the environment, but after some days we think we should also search for international speakers or invite speakers from plantation-related fields of life for better guidance. After many efforts, we succeeded in getting six speakers for our webinar nationally and internationally.
We also changed our strategy for the audience of the webinar, as initially, we started to register members for the 1st webinar. We added just those members in our WhatsApp group who registered for the webinar. After some days we realize just some people register themselves for webinar then we change our strategy, firstly we share our WhatsApp group link on social media and adding people to our WhatsApp group after adding members to our WhatsApp group we send them our webinar registration form and we get 288 registrations for the webinar. Which was a very great achievement.
Impact
The most significant impact of our project was on the minds of people, as a youth started a project related to the environment and nature, they all were very much inspired by our initiative.
We successfully found 6 speakers for our webinar. All of them were well experienced in their relevant fields. All the guest speakers were not so sure about the success of our webinar, but after this webinar, all the chief guests were really inspired by our management and the organization. They all appreciate the efforts that we put into making a successful webinar.
We asked every volunteer to plant at least one tree in your surrounding wherever possible and also requested them to encourage at least one person to plant a tree and so on. In addition to this, we are also providing plants to the willing people, as we have approached the Punjab Forest Department to donate our plants and they also accept our request and agreed in giving us plants. So, in this way, we will also distribute plants to people so that they plant them easily wherever they want.
We are also able to find sponsors for our movement Green project, most of the people agreed to sponsor us in different ways. We are collaborating with different companies such as Digital Pakistan, Jobs every day Pakistan, Punjab University, and Punjab forest department.
By this webinar, the most significant success that we achieve is to engage youth in this project. Now the youth are participating with us in different ways, not only in the way of volunteering but also aware of others people around them. They are now more conscious about the environment, and also plant trees with themselves in their surroundings.
We also convey our message by social media pages to about 1500+ people, and able to gather a massive audience on these platforms.
Sustainability of the project
We are now planning to convert this Movement Green project into a society. We are focusing on expanding our volunteer network. We are now encouraging existing volunteers to search and find more volunteers in their surroundings that are passionate about the environment. We are also planning to make certain departments within the Movement Green, so that the responsibilities would be completed more conveniently, such as the advertisement department, webinar organization department, and others.
In addition, we as a team are approaching various organizations for sponsorship and funding. We have also started a collaboration with different organizations that have the same mission and ideology.
We also now want to convert this small plantation initiative into a nationwide plantation drive, we are now using social media platforms to encourage people for the plantation, but after that, we are also aiming to start a physical plantation campaign.
