TIST
March 2006
CHEZHUMAI ©
Women’s Day – March 8 TIST Wishes Greetings to all the Women of TIST Small Groups. Every Wise Woman buildeth her house. TIST calls all the Women to join together to buildup the TIST activities and find the treasure from tree planting.
Chamundhi Small Group of Chittoor The members of this Small Group are carrying out the ‘Best Practices’ of TIST along with the Tree Planting activities for more than 2 years. We have talked about this group in the Chezhumai, February 2005 issue, that they are planning to plant more trees. Now they have done it.
They have more than 35,000 trees with them in 11 different groves and having two different kinds of trees, like Casuarina and Eucalyptus. Couple of months back, they had started two new groves with few thousand Eucalyptus trees. These Eucalyptus trees are standing 1-2 feet in height. Most special about these groves is that, they had planted Sunflower plants (Suryagandhi) as intercrops. This grove is well planned with ridges and furrows, one row for Eucaluptus and next row Sunflower. These intercropping are about 80 days old. In another 15 days, they will get their yield from the Sunflower,approximately Rs.10,000/- may be their revenue. They have spent just Rs.200/- on the cost of seeds and of course their hard work in taking care. This revenue is apart from their TIST voucher for their trees. Their Casuarina trees are also ready to get revenue for them, these Casuarina trees are more than 2 years old and standing more than 10 feet in height. Very soon the side branches will be trimmed and yet another income will increase their happiness more.
Vedal Centre
All the Small Groups of Vedal own just few cents of land around their home, which they have utilized effectively for planting trees. During 2004, when we had visited Bethel Nagar and Aandiseruvallur for quantification, we did not have shade anywhere in the village to rest. Now after two years, we see lot of tall trees around each house in Bethel Nagar. The members have good share all around their house. Small Groups like, Lotus, Sunflower, Ganga, Jasmine, Lilly, Adam, Eve, Yamuna, Ester, Mary, Infant, Velan, Antony, Chandran, Selvam, Thalambu, Pushpam, Annam, Vembhu, Alli, Devan, Easan, and Samandhi are practicing the best practices of TIST and performing the tree planting in a good way.
Eve Small Group of Bethel Nagar – Vedal Centre
This Small Group has six different species of trees like, 2 Guava trees, 9 Mango trees, 2 Tamarind trees, 3 Agathai trees, 31 Eucalyptus trees and 30 more trees of few other different species. Guava, Subhapul and Mango trees are one year old. Tamarind trees are two years old and Agathai and Eucalyptus trees are three years old. The growth of Agathai and Eucalyptus trees are very good. All six different species of trees are planted in a single grove called Rajendran1. During the last quantification on 29th January 2005, there are total 85 trees in their grove. According to the number of trees in their grove, the voucher amount is very low for this small group, but still they have taken good care for their trees.
Samandhi Small Group of Bethel Nagar – Vedal Centre
This Small Group has five different species of trees like, 27 Casuarina, 41 Eucalyptus trees, 6 Guava trees, 2 Mango trees, 4 Neem trees, 3 Teak trees and 67 more trees of few other different species. Eucalyptus, Guava, and Neem are two years old and Casuarina trees are recently planted trees. There are more than 7 different species of trees, all planted in a single grove called Manoj. During the last quantification on 29th January 2005, there are total 150 trees in their grove. There were only 60-65 trees during mid 2005, but they have taken little more efforts to increase their tree counts. According to the number of trees in their grove, the voucher amount is very low for this small group, but still they have taken good care in protecting the existing trees and started planting new trees.
Sign the GHG agreement and take the Voucher payment.
Note from TIST
There are few Small Groups who appoint lot of workers for transplanting their trees, which costs more for the members. The members find it difficult to pay the salary for their workers and blame TIST for not quantifying their groves during transplanting. The members feel that, if quantification is done immediately after transplanting, the number in tree count will be more and so their voucher payment will be high. Actuality, if the quantification of that grove is done 2 months later, the number in tree count will be 50% less due to poor care. TIST is making voucher payment only for live trees. If the voucher payment is made according to the quantification taken during transplanting, 2 months later it will be a great shortfall for TIST, because it is certain that there will be 40%-50% less in tree count.
Do not take long steps. All the members join together and work in your groves. How nice it will be if you work for your grove instead of having a worker – you need not share your voucher payment with your workers. You can enjoy the full benefit.
Do not pressurize your quantifier to quantify unseen trees/seedlings. Always accompany your quantifier during quantification and have boards for every grove to avoid wrong quantification. Get the quantification summary from the quantifier immediately after quantifying your groves.
TIST Wishes Greetings to all the Women of TIST Small Groups.
