Sharing time and knowledge: A senior social activist helping street children in Delhi to prepare for their exams©JoiningHands
It initiated Project GreenHands in 2005 as a massive ecological initiative to prevent and reverse environmental degradation and enable sustainable living. Pooling extensively on people’s participation, the project aimed to plant 114 million trees statewide to create 10 per cent additional green cover in Tamil Nadu. A mass tree-planting marathon was held on October 17, 2006, which resulted in setting a Guinness World Record of 852 thousand saplings14 being planted. They have almost a million volunteers across India and so has another organization called ‘the Art of Living’. This not-for-profit, educational and humanitarian Non-government Organization (NGO) was founded in 1981 by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, which engages in stress-management and service initiatives with one of the largest volunteer bases in the world. Through diverse humanitarian projects in the field of conflict resolution, disaster relief, sustainable rural development, empowerment of women, environmental sustainability etc. the foundation has spread peace across communities.15
Lessons for development NGOs in the 21 Century The resurgent phase of voluntary initiatives began after Independence. The first 20 years of Independence, until the mid-1960s, may be termed as the phase of nation building. Many people in social reform-based voluntary action and in constructive work joined together to tackle the emerging needs and tasks of nation-building, focusing on extension work in agriculture and health and on community development etc. One consequence was the funding by government of Khadi and Village Industries. It also resulted in the formalizing of work in education and health, and in economic activities, through government-sponsored cooperative movements. Some social reform movements found expression in social work and in its teaching institutions set up to train young people in social work. The underlying aim remained
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14 Project GreenHands. Retrieved 11 January 2012 from http://www.ishafoundation.org/ProjectGreenHands. 15 The Art of Living. Art of Living – Overview. Retrieved 25 January 2012 from http://www.artofliving.org/in-en/ about-us/overview.