NOTE FROM JONAH: This is Part I of XII in “The Million Tree Project,” a video series documenting Shanghai Roots & Shoots efforts to combat desertification in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
THE MILLION TREE PROJECT CHAPTER INDEX
1. The Project
2. Desertification
3. The Volunteers
4. A Wall of Trees
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
6. A Volunteer’s Life
7. Life on the Desert’s Edge
8. A Local’s Life
9. Education
10. Working Together
11. The Man Who Planted Trees
12. A Better Future
Creating a twelve part video series is actually quite difficult — given how the videos would be aired. These videos will be aired on a Dragon TV, a Hong Kong based television station, on Saturdays and Sundays for a six week period. The videos were all supposed to be around two minutes; however, we have to assume the each viewer has not seen the preceding episode. This means the videos had to function both individually and as a sequential series.
To do this we started by making a 30 second trailer, which would begin each episode and hopefully get viewers caught to speed. The next 1.5-2 minutes would be unique content about some unqiue aspect of this project. Coming up with twelve themes was a bit challenging, but in the end, proved no problem.
To begin the series, we started with the project itself.
Shanghai Roots & Shoots’ Million Tree Project, which began in 2007, aims to raise community awareness of the Earth’s precious environment while focusing on steps individuals can take to lessen their negative impact on the natural world. The project gives individuals and organizations an opportunity to fight global warming by planting oxygen-producing trees in Inner Mongolia, China. It also encompasses true capacity building as the local population is intimately involved with, and benefits from, every step of planting, maintaining and monitoring the trees.
The Million Tree Project is designed to improve both ecological and humanitarian conditions of Kulun Qi, Tongliao municipality, lnner Mongolia, We chose this project site because the area suffers severely from desertification and its consequential sandstorms. These sandstorms strike Inner Mongolia and its surrounding areas each spring, destroying local homes and forcing many people to flee their native land.
The Goal: Shanghai Roots & Shoots aims to plant one million trees in the Inner Mongolian desert by 2014. We have a long-term Memorandum of Understanding in place with the Forestry Bureau of Kunlun Qi to reach this goal, and have secured land for one million trees (planting an average of 1500 trees per hectare). As of April 2010, we have planted 400,000 trees.
Learn how you can help at mtpchina.org
