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These four ladies led efforts to plant 300 trees in Bulacan's Ipo Watershed
Last October 19, a group of less than 50 went up Mt. Balagbag in Bulacan to plant 300 saplings of native trees at Ipo Watershed.
The green initiative was led by Taya Pinas, a campaign spearheaded by a barkada of four twenty-something women.
Cam Teodoro, 22, Patti Co, 21, Sofia Padilla, 22, and Sam Laureola, 22 all share a passion for the environment.
So when news broke that the Amazon Rainforest was on fire, “we were all devastated,” said Patti in an email interview with GMA News Online. “It made sense to group together to come up with solid action plans to help out.”
They didn't necessarily mean helping out with the forest fires in South America. Instead, they looked at the pressing matter — Planet Earth losing forest cover — and set their sights on what they can do from where they were.
On August 22, Taya Pinas was born. “Derived from the childhood Filipino term ‘Taya’ in games, this is our way of challenging or ‘tagging’ everyone to act now and cultivate a greener world. Our tree planting activity is ideally the first project of many,” Patti continued.
It took the ladies another two weeks to sort out their plan, introduce themselves, and involve a bigger audience by crowdfunding their tree planting initiative.
Taya Pinas partnered with environmental group Eco Explorations, which already has an existing reforestation initiative with IPO Watershed. According to Cam, they really targeted the watershed in Bulacan as “it supplies 98% of Metro Manila’s water. Less than 40% of the forest cover remains, which is alarming.”
The forest cover helps in “recharging the groundwater, preventing erosion, and producing oxygen.”
It’s a lot of serious information to handle but Taya Pinas deftly communicated it all on Instagram, which was their main marketing channel.
“We have often found ourselves simply sharing and liking posts to raise awareness on pressing environmental issues, but doing so never gave us assurance that any actual contribution was happening,” Sam said.
While liking and sharing played a huge part in Taya Pinas’ strategy, they took it a notch higher by keeping true to their name and playing a digital version of tag —they would repeatedly ask their followers to tag their friends in posts to push their advocacy further out.
They also kept transparent about everything: their partnership with Eco Explorations, the progress of their crowdfunding efforts, the kinds of trees they were to plant.
They decided to plant native trees: Dao, Batino, Kupang, and Supa. “Through Eco Explorations, we learned the importance of promoting and planting native trees. Some exotic seedlings have been planted in the past and exhibited harmful species. Native trees are the best way due to their ecological compatibility with our local environment,” Cam adds.
On September 9, they began crowdfunding. The goal was to plant 300 trees, which meant raising P49,500.
“A tree pack (P165) funds a native tree as well as boots, machetes, and rice allowance donations to the forest rangers, who continues to take care of the seedlings and trees at Ipo,” Sam explains.
The biggest challenge they faced was really getting the word out there. “We were also battling with time and pressure to reach our goal of raising funds for 300 trees before our deadline," Sofia shares.
But by October 1, they've successfully crowdfunded 288 trees. One day before the actual tree planting, Taya Pinas had enough for 329 trees — that's 29 more than their goal of 300 trees.
They kept the actual tree planting activity small, limiting it among friends and family “in order to properly prepare ourselves should we encounter the opportunity to plan more in the future,” Sam continues.
With 23 volunteers, three representatives from Eco Explorations, and Bantay Gubat Rangers, the Taya team went up Mt. Balagbag and began doing their part in making Planet Earth a bit greener.
Cam says, “it was really insightful because the tree planting activity consisted of lectures and moving stories told by the Bantay Gubat Rangers.”
According to Taya Pinas, another tree planting activity will be held this month, with the same goal of planting 300 trees.
This time however, they already have a headstart: the excess of 29 from their first initiative will be carried over.
“Tree planting season is almost over so this is really the best time to plant trees. After that, we also plan to address other concerns including mangrove planting, clam adoption, or coral restoration.” — With Ma. Angelica Garcia/LA, GMA News
