CM to inaugurate Mata Amritanandamayi Math’s all-India afforestation drive

TechnoparkToday.com(Sept, 2013)>> A massive all-India afforestation programme by the Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM) will start off today when Kerala Chief Minister, Shri Oommen Chandy, will plant the first of the proposed 60 lakh saplings across the length and breadth of the country in a year’s time.

The Monday function in Cliff House at 9 am will also mark the inauguration of raising more than six lakh plants in the state in the run-up toSeptember 27, which is the 60th birthday of internationally renowned spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, fondly called Amma by her followers.

MAM, a non-governmental organization that is organizing the campaign celebrating Amma’s 60th birthday at a two-day function in Amritapuri onSeptember 26 and 27, said 60 lakh saplings will be planted overall in a year’s time from now.

“We will organize the distribution and planting of the saplings all across India,” a spokesperson of MAM said. “We will draw support from our huge community of devotee-volunteers as well as its educational institutions.”

The Math has a five-campus university, called Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, in Vallikavu of downstate Kollam district, besides 50-plus Amritavidyalayam schools.

The afforestation drive will further be conducted abroad, where Amma’s other devotee-run organisations, collectively known as ‘Embracing the World’, will facilitate the sapling-distribution and planting, the MAM spokesperson informed. As a member of the United Nations Billion Tree Campaign, MAM has already assisted in the planting of more than one-million trees since 2001.

The September 26-27 programme, named Amritavarsham60, is expected to draw a five lakh devotees and admirers of Amma, according to MAM, which has charted out an array of humanitarian and social-welfare campaigns for the occasion.

The afforestation program is part of volunteer-run green activities conducted by MAM. These include the Amala Bharatam Campaign (ABC), a programme aimed at improving public health and at restoring India’s physical beauty. Through ABC, the MAM has already undertaken more than 1,000 cleaning drives throughout India since 2010. In fact, at the request of the Kerala Government, it has cleaned up hundreds of tonnes of trash from the famous pilgrimage site of Sabarimala Temple and the adjoining PampaRiver in south-central Kerala.

This afforestation program and MAM’s cleaning drives are part of Amma’s teaching that “The Creator and the creation are not two”, and that service to the environment is service to the Divine.