CUTTACK: Cuttack may be slowly losing its green cover but a group of locals are on a mission to bring back the greenery. Members of Silver City Cuttack Public Charitable Trust have been preparing and throwing seed balls in and around the Millennium City for the last three years under their ‘Mission Green Cuttack’ drive. This time, they plan to throw 5,000 seed balls during the ongoing monsoon season.
“We took up the seed ball initiative after realising that the Forest department failed to carry out plantation drives following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. We have been making seed balls by purchasing clay and seeds of different indigenous trees like neem, teak, cedar, casuarina, deodar, peepal, mango, bael, banyan etc. and throwing them in different areas of the city and outskirts on holidays,” said Abhijeet Prusty, who founded the trust in 2017.
The idea of throwing seed balls was proposed by co-founder of the trust Rashmi Ranjan Pradhan who during his stint with an NGO in Bengaluru had gone through the seed ball throwing exercise.Prusty and Pradhan said the chances of survival of a sapling planted directly is much less than that of a sapling originating from a seed ball because of speedy germination, rooting and growth.
The seed ball initiative began in the year 2020. Members of the organisation threw 2,500 seed balls in 2020, 2,200 balls a year later and plan to throw at least 5,000 seed balls this year. So far, they have made 4,000 seed balls and a majority of it has been thrown around the Peacock Valley. “We are hopeful of achieving our 5,000 target by Durga Puja this year. Our members also keep an eye on germination of the seeds and survival of the saplings. A majority of the seed balls that we threw in 2020 have survived,” said trust president Akash Patnaik.
There are 150 active members in the organisation ranging from doctors to teachers, engineers, police officers, housewives and students - all contributing in their own ways for a better future of Cuttack and its people.
Their work does not stop at throwing seed balls. They have been running several projects in the ‘City of Brotherhood’, be it cleaning and colouring different roundabouts under Mission Clean Cuttack, providing food to the needy under Mission Hunger Free Cuttack, providing free coaching class to 50 underprivileged students of Classes I to X in Sadhabani area under Project Diganta, educating adolescent girls and women in city slums on menstrual hygiene under Gift Her Dignity campaign or providing bicycles to schoolkids in slum areas under Love Pedal project.
Recently, they have started taking up repairing dilapidated temples under their Save Our Heritage campaign in Cuttack district. And last year, the members staged a silent protest for 96 days and sent 2,500 postcards to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik demanding renovation of Barabati Moat. While members voluntarily contribute money towards these works, the organisation also gets public donations for the purpose.