根与芽植树活动报告

Shanghai Roots & Shoots Million Tree Project report

from Nanjing Foreign LanguageSchoolCIECenter

By Li Yi, Ariel

April 23, 2011

tinsariel@hotmail.com

How did we join in this project?

NFLS Green Hope environmental club joined Shanghai Roots&Shoots in November, 2010. Soon after that we learnt that there is a project aimed at improving the environmental conditions in Inner Mongolia, China, by tree planting called “Million Tree Project”. Our club found this project both interesting and meaningful to carry out, so we submitted the application in November and joined in the fundraising competition among all the R&S groups in Jiangsu and Shanghai. At that time we were given a specific goal to achieve: 400 trees. Only if we raised 400 trees would we get the chance to go to Inner Mongolia and plant the trees ourselves.

How did we achieve the goal?

We quickly went into action. After a few meetings with the club members, we decided that the most effective way is to carry out fundraising activities on and off campus at the same time.

Inside the school we put up posters on every floor and constantly went to every classroom to publicize the MTP project. We tried to make every student realize the importance of tree planting and think about what they can do for the environment. We designed many slides, handmade a big tree-shape poster and played the R&S video in the lecture hall. As for the foreign teachers, we tried to get them involved. We bought a world map and asked the teachers whether or not they would go back to their hometown during the winter holiday. When they said, “Yes”, we then used the carbon calculator to calculate the number of trees they had to buy so that their flight could be environmental friendly. On New Year’s Day we organized a charity bazaar and sold the R&S goods to the school faculty. This also produced positive responses.

Within one week the whole school had been made aware of this project and over 150 trees were donated. Considering our school only has a size of 300 students this was a pretty good result. There are some after effects as well. One of them is that I got a nickname “Tree girl” and I’m still called so today.

Off campus activities were more challenging than we thought. The first idea we got was to put the donation boxes in the restaurants near the school. Bakeries, fast food restaurants, western style restaurants…… Our donation boxes were everywhere. Although the money collected was not as much as we had expected, partially because the donation boxes were not showy and attractive enough, we still gained some valuable experience. The second thought was to fundraise in the downtown area. We organized 5 campaigns of this kind and received a lot of money from this. Of course it wasn’t entirely roses all the way. We met some resistance from the city inspectors and sometimes were even barred from that area. Therefore the next time we organized such a thing, we did enough research and communication beforehand to make sure of success.

By the end of the year 2010, our club had achieved our goal of 400 trees. We raised ￥10,200 altogether, that is 408 trees. On Jan 23, 2011, Coco and I, as the representatives of our school, attended the report-back meeting of this competition in Shanghai. We were surprised to know that our school took the first place in this competition, and we were lucky enough to get a ￥1,000 per head sponsorship from Shanghai Community International School. Thanks to them, we reduced our budget by 30%.

The tree planting trip

Finally, we got there, Inner Mongolia. The one-and-a-half day tree planting was short, but everyone tried his/her best during it. I tried seedling, irrigation, digging and refilling the soil. None of these processes is negligible and easy to do. Though all of us were sweating, no one took a rest. After experiencing the heavy sandstorms in the desert, seeing all the restaurants using one-off chopsticks, we’ve realized what we can do, and what we need to do, will be far more than planting several trees here. As the roots of the poplar trees are deep on the earth, the roots of environmental protection are also deep in our minds. Our team of 60 people planted 1,780 trees in total. When I came back to school and people asked me, “How many trees did you plant?” I was proud enough to tell them everything we did on that land. And that is the essence of this trip: to experience, to learn, and to raise people's awareness of protection for the environment through their own actions.

To find more information about the Green Hope Club, please go to our website below: