These Twitter enthusiasts have a green cause

BANGALORE, INDIA: On a lazy public holiday, I decided to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon in the company of a friend who is a presenter at a popular radio station in the city.

Between being awestruck at the sheer speed with which my friend turns knobs on the studio console, rattles away information about the next song, and checks his Facebook page for ‘shout-outs’, we had a rather unique bunch of visitors at the radio station.

Four individuals named Hrish Thota, Prasanna M, Rahul and a young lady whose Twitter ID goes by the name of @angeldirect, dropped in to meet RJ Anjaan and a fellow RJ with a sapling each. The reason? A bunch of Twitter enthusiasts came together with what they call The Sapling Project, and jammed up in Lalbagh, Bangalore’s Botanical garden, to plant a sapling, with the aim of doing their bit towards creating a greener city.

What promises to be even more exciting is the fact that the planters are expected to tweet the development of the sapling (which is either a Neem or an Ashoka plant sapling), at least twice a week, preferably accompanied by a photograph at regular intervals.

The Mumbai counterparts of the foursome who headed the Bangalore initiative are currently proclaiming their fete of having planted 750 saplings across 8 locations in the city, and with Chennai joining the bandwagon, the sapling project has been a huge hit, and promises to have similar projects in the weeks to follow.

The first ever distribution drive by The Sapling Project was spearheaded by two Mumbai-based Satish Vijaykumar and Ranjeet Walunj. Held at Shivaji park, Mumbai on December 19, 2009, the event was an offline realization of an online project to revive Mumbai’s green cover in whatever small ways possible.

The website, www.thesaplingproject.com still invites enthusiasts from various cities to join the movement and take it forward. Are you interested?