KALAMPANGAN - Climate change is a collective problem that needs collective action. So one of the most powerful things we do to fight climate change is to empower youth at the grassroots level to participate in climate action through the collective tree planting movement, The Heartland Project.
Forty five young people joined hand planting 1,000 trees in this 3 days-planting movement. They are from 6 youth organizations from Palangka Raya, which are Mapala Adiwiyata, Mapala Dozer, ft_upr, BEM Stikes Eka Harap, Mapala Comodo and Pkbm Candrakirana. We began our journey by gathering all of the volunteers in our Palangka Raya headquarters. We make sure we have all of the necessary tools before heading to the planting site. The location is in the suburbs, around an hour's drive from Palangka Raya.
When we got to the tree planting site, Sumarni Laman, the coordinator of this tree planting initiative, showed how to plant a tree in an ex-burned peat bog. She then divided the youths into teams at random, allowing everyone to establish new friendships.
All the participants experienced the hardships of tree planting - it's not as simple as it appears! They had to take a motorcycle over muddy peatland, walk to the planting spot with all the equipment, manually cut the bush, and create an 'anjir' - a wooden stick to mark the placement of the tree.
"It is my first time stepping foot in a peatland ecosystem and also my first experience joining the tree planting movement. I'm happy to do a good thing to protect my forest", said Sasa, a junior high school student and also the youngest volunteer.
We aim to plant one million trees! You can support the tree planting program by donating here.
