Devender Sura, a police officer from Sonipat Haryana has planted more than 1,00,000 trees across 152 villages in Haryana for the past 8 years and has spent over 30 lakhs from his own pocket to make his state green.

It was during his deployment in Chandigarh, that police constable Devender Sura first fell in love with the city’s verdant roads and streets, and began to nurse the wish to transform his hometown, Sonepat in Haryana, in a similar manner. While many of us have wished to see more trees and plants across the cities and towns that we inhabit, Sura turned his dream into reality. For the last eight years, he has persistently endeavoured to bring about a wave of green to not just his village, but also of the entire district of Sonepat.

               

He decided to live with farmers and learn how to grow plants and nurture them. After spending about two weeks figuring out the technicalities, he set up his nursery across a piece of land, for which he pays a rent of ₹50,000 per year and has supplied plants across the state, ever since. He travels in a cycle to villages and distributes saplings encouraging villagers to plant more trees, he has so far distributed around 2 lakhs plants in villages. Anybody can pick up plants for free from his nursery which is open 24 hours.

         

Beginning as a self-driven initiative in 2012, his green crusade reached out to over 152 village panchayats, and today, a network of approximately 2,000 dedicated and passionate volunteers across Haryana are a part of Sura’s team. He is the sole person funding the initiative and claims to have spent over 28 to 30 lakhs in the last six years, and despite the strong disapproval from his family, he doesn’t have any qualms about dedicating a significant chunk of his monthly salary to this initiative.

   

Police officer Devender is in requirement of funds and needs your support now to keep his initiative going.