How Vrikshamitra Foundation started...
In 2020, Hennagara Lake, one of the better lakes of the city was being encroached into. Our Founder, Tushar Chandra, who lived beside the lake and had fallen in love with it, couldn’t allow this to happen in spite of the tremendous risk it posed to him.
The Goon responsible for dumping garbage and sewage into the lake and unloading 100s of truckloads of construction debris on the lake side and pushing it into the lake had a lot of money, political influence and was infamous for physically assaulting anyone who dared to oppose him. Tushar only had the Media and the police. He approached the police and it filed a complaint, though the actions of the Goon warranted an FIR to be filed. Luckily for Tushar, he was able to take the help of Dr. Yelappa Reddy, a retired IFS officer, who ensured the FIR was filed. He also found help from the media, and over half a dozen leading media houses covered the story. This forced the Goon to stop doing what he was and clean up all the debris that had been dumped.
Tushar then got in touch with a larger NGO that helped him to create a 10,000 tree Miyawaki forest in the area beside the lake.
This incident made Tushar understand the difficulty in taking on such tasks as a lone warrior. Though the encroachment in Hennagara Lake had stopped, the lake was still getting polluted with the inflow of untreated wastewater. It was impossible to do anything about it as companies wouldn’t care to help him and even the Governemt agencies did not seem to care.
Tushar found other activists in the area who cared about lakes, and Vrikshamitra Foundation was registered as a Sec(8) Company.
In the first 3 years after setting up, we have completed over half a dozen small projects. And are now ready to take on the actual task of restoring Hennagara and other lakes in Anekal.