TreeVolution: Greening MindaNOW

20:47

We have heard so many blah blah blah and yadah yadah yadah about this climate change thingy. But are we really acting on it? Do we try to address, solve, lessen the effect of this so-called New Normal?

It's a good thing that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) recently spearheaded a tree planting activity dubbed as "TreeVolution: Greening MindaNOW" where thousands of volunteers all over Mindanao (that includes us) gathered together for one common goal.

As of press time, Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) and DENR posted the unofficial tally at 3,517,489 trees as of Tuesday. Breaking India's record of 1.9 M trees planted in 1 hour set in 2011. But this is yet to be verified by the representatives of the Guinness Book of World Records.

Each of the organizations that supported the activity was assigned a "steward" who would orient and instruct the participants on the many how to's. A teacher from i-dont-know-where was assigned to us. I asked the steward about the goal of the activity and its effect to the community. Unexpectedly, she said that our goal was to break India's record in planting the most number of trees in one hour. Right there and then, I wanted to sink her in the muddy mangrove area upside down. Though she was right, I was expecting another and a more sensible answer. Probably something related to the National Greening Program or something like awareness on environment issues.

Steward: Dapat daw ma-break natin ang record ng India. (Accordingly we need to break India's record.)

Me: Yun lang? (That's it?)

Steward: Yun ang sabi sa amin eh. (That's what they told us.)
Me: *facepalm*

Anyways, here are some photos we took during the event. Picture-taking was actually not allowed because they wanted the participants to focus on planting and not on capturing the moment on film.