A Small Forest, A Big Change

Bhiwandi is not a quiet town. It runs on powerlooms and logistics, on workers who come from far away and stay, on buildings that go up faster than the roads between them can be planned. Green space is not something most people here think about, not because they do not want it, but because there has never been much of it to think about.

Salma has lived in Mhada Colony, Gokulnagar for eleven years. She lives with her husband, who works at a powerloom unit nearby, and their three children. Outside the colony, there was a abandoned piece of land. For as long as Salma can remember, it was just sitting there. Bare ground, broken construction debris, dust that would blow into the colony whenever the wind picked up. "In summer, that plot used to be terrible,". "All the heat, all the dust. The children would come inside with their eyes red." Nobody used the space. Nobody wanted to.

The ground was hard and dry. Plastic would collect at the edges. On hot afternoons, the heat from that open patch made the surrounding area noticeably worse. "We would keep the windows closed in the afternoon,". "But the dust still came in."

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."

Under Project Shoonya, implemented by Making The Difference Charitable Trust with CSR support from eClerx, Fiserv and in partnership with Bhiwandi Nizampur City Municipal Corporation and United Way Mumbai, 7,510 saplings of 56 native species were planted across 20,500 sq. ft. plot of land using the Miyawaki afforestation technique. The Miyawaki method involves planting densely packed, indigenous species that grow faster and form a self sustaining ecosystem over time.

The change was visible from the first week. "Earlier it was just mud and stone. Now there are small plants everywhere,". Her children, who never went near the plot before, have started stopping to look at it on their way to school. The saplings are still young, still growing, but the plot that nobody wanted has started to become something.

For the residents of Mahada Colony, Gokulnagar, Project Shoonya has turned a neglected patch of land into the beginning of something the neighbourhood never had, a small forest, slowly finding its feet.