Monsoon Wooding
The verb is ours and it is the whole campaign: planted and survived.
What we do
About 5,000 trees a year in Delhi NCR. Over 50,000 planted and survived.
What it sets out to do
Count what lived
The claim is a survivor count and it costs a second visit to make. A planting number can be produced on the day, and we have decided that is not the claim.
Work with the weather rather than around it
The campaign is aimed at the few weeks a year when a sapling in this city has odds at all. Everything else is scheduling.
Be there after the photograph
What this is trying to get a tree through is the second summer. Almost everything that kills a sapling in Delhi happens once everybody has gone home.
Anybody can plant.
The verb we use is survived. It is the only part of a tree number that takes any work.
Strategy and activities
Spread across Delhi
The plantings are all over Delhi rather than gathered in one showpiece site.
How survived is counted
We go back and count how many are still standing against how many went in. Most tree numbers you read are the day of the photograph. This one is the year after.
Plant
Through the monsoon months in Delhi, because that is when a sapling lives. The season is not a theme — it is the reason a survival figure is worth counting at all. The planting is done by volunteers, so the size of the campaign in any year is a straight count of who turned up in the rain.
Protect
A sapling in Delhi has a fence, a summer and a road crew to survive. Planting day is the photograph; the two years after it are the campaign.
Young plants at our own nursery, not at a planting site.
Promote
The least measurable of the three. Getting somebody who planted once to come back the following monsoon is what turns a season into a campaign.
Who it is for
Volunteers
The planting is done by whoever turns up in the rain, which is why the size of a season and the number of people in it are the same figure.
The neighbourhoods that get the trees
Plantings are spread across Delhi rather than gathered in one place. Fifty thousand survivors, somewhere behind you.
The saplings
They are the population this campaign counts. Everything else is about keeping them alive.
Impact
~5,000
Trees planted in Delhi NCR
each year
50,000+
Trees planted and survived
Over fifty thousand, planted and survived
About five thousand trees a year across Delhi NCR, and over fifty thousand still alive. The second number is the one that took work.
Five funders behind the seasons
IndusInd Bank, PwC, Amazon, Adobe, S&P Global.
What it looks like
Monsoon Wooding, from the archive
Who it is with
Funders by name.
- IndusInd Bank
- PwC
- Amazon
- Adobe
- S&P Global
Get involved
Plant with us
Straight to a person
This goes to Vimlendu Jha, Swechha’s Executive Director.
Or write to vimlendu@swechha.in.
Fund this work
Straight to a person
This goes to Vimlendu Jha, Swechha’s Executive Director.
Or write to vimlendu@swechha.in.
The campaign is as big each year as the number of people who turn up in the rain.