In a Nutshell

When asked my my 8th grade social studies teacher to write out "some ideas that would help our community"  I wrote down several ideas in my notebook including my outline for Plant a Promise. My response was,""… Another idea that could help our community would be a program called "Plant a Promise”. It would be a program for children in elementary school around the 3rd grade. These children would create goals that they set for themselves, their community and their future. To illustrate their promises, the children would plant a tree in a designated area and place a stepping stone next to it .The stepping stone would have their names and their goals placed on it. As the children grew and their goals grew, the tree would also grow. This would benefit the children because they would be driven to accomplish their goals. The community would benefit because the community's children would be goal oriented and our environment would benefit because of the new trees."


That is Plant a Promise is a simple nutshell 

Plant a Promise: the Story

                    Mahatma Gandhi is credited for the saying,” Be the change that you wish to see in the world”, and I hope to follow Gandhi’s message. About two years ago at the end of the school year I asked my parents for a tree. Now why a tree? I’ve always seen trees as the yang of our eco system. Trees clean the air, use CO2 that humans exhale, and produce the necessary oxygen humans need to breath. I also see trees as a metaphor for human life and emotions. They are strong and resistant to that which threatens to harm them but when pushed to far they may snap at their weakest part. When combining the metaphor for life and the positive environmental impact that trees have, I couldn’t think of anything else I could want.

                Now you may be asking what it matters that I wanted a tree and why it matters why I wanted a tree. See the thing is, I am one of those people who is not satisfied by just getting a tree( or anything that has a similar simplicity), that tree has to have some kind of meaning to it. It’s one of the peculiar things about being me. So I used my metaphor for a tree and the promises I had recently made to myself and came up with the meaning for the tree. As I grew, the tree grew. As it grew stronger and more resistant to potential harms, so would I and my promises. The tree would be my representation of me, my life and my promises for myself, my future and my community.

                When I finally got to this point in my thought process where I normally would be done, I got to thinking. I had recently took on the thought process that I was only a small part in a vastly larger system of people and societies. My individual ideas and problems were “small bananas” compared to the ideas and problems of the community, the country and the world. So I decided to take my own individual tree and promises as open them as wide as I could and make a plan for more than just me. And so Plant a Promise was born. 

Intro

The last few years have been a whirlwind of thoughts, ideas and passion. I had never known the passion you could have for a cause up until now. It is what drives you and what leads your decisions and opinions. Passion for what  I believe in, passion for what I have created and passion for what I am doing are all what get my teenage sleep deprived body out of bed in the morning. I get up, go to school, participate in extracurriculars,  come home, do homework , and start the process all over again all because I know that I will make a difference and impact someone in that time period. Big or small it is an impact. Through my idea of Plant a Promise, I hope to impact many and make a difference in countless lives.