THE UNMUKT GREEN ARMY | TUGA

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To nurture a generation of young environmental stewards who don’t just learn about the planet—they live in harmony with it.

May 1st, 2017

• Be a Team Leader, if you are living in an area where education is not accessible to underserved children and you wish to support their education. 
• Volunteer with us to create drawing instructions, or interactive games for children.

To fix a call with us to know more about the program whatsapp us at +91 93487 31510. 

or/and

To help this project sustain.

Picture this: You’re a child. You’ve grown up beneath the comforting shade of mango trees, chasing butterflies through gullies lined with gulmohars. Your swing hangs from the old neem, and you know the smell of summer by the dust and the scent of leaves.

Then one night, the wind howls.

Cyclone Fani arrives—fierce and unforgiving. When morning comes, your world has changed. The trees are gone. The ground is broken. The sky feels a little more empty.

This is not imagination—it is memory.

In May 2019, thousands of trees were uprooted across Bhubaneswar. Streets that once breathed with life were stripped bare. For residents of Bhubaneswar, it wasn’t just a storm—it was grief. A quiet, heavy kind. One that left playgrounds silent and summer shade lost.

But out of this loss, something beautiful began to grow. About the Unmukt Green Army

The Unmukt Green Army is a youth-led environmental action program that believes small steps can lead to great work. Through joyful, practical activities like preparing bio-enzymes from kitchen waste, making seed balls, planting trees, and leading cleanliness campaigns, the youth gain ownership over the spaces they live in.

They become not just participants, but protectors—developing a personal connection with the Earth that is rooted in daily care, wonder, and responsibility.

Because real change doesn’t begin with big speeches. It begins with muddy hands, curious minds, and kind hearts.

Let’s look at one of such critical story: 

Pihu (name changed), a 10-year-old girl from Khandagiri Bari, remembers the night Cyclone Fani hit. “It sounded like the sky was breaking,” she says. The next morning, the tree she used to tie her swing to had collapsed across their lane. “I cried. Not because of the storm. But because it took my tree.”

When the Unmukt Green Army began its work, Pihu was among the first to join. Today, she leads plantation drives in her neighbourhood, teaching others how to care for saplings, how to make seed balls, and how to turn waste into natural cleaners.

The Unmukt Green Army is our children's answer to loss. It is their way of saying: We remember. And we will rebuild.

Born in the aftermath of destruction, the Green Army has become a living, growing movement of healing. Our children don’t just learn about the environment—they restore it with their own hands. They bottle fruit peels into fragrant bio-enzymes, roll seed balls like little prayers to the soil, and carry saplings as gently as dreams.

Here, environmental action is not a chapter in a book—it is a rhythm, a ritual, a promise.

Because when children begin to care for the Earth, they don’t just change their surroundings.

They change the future.

Segment of the population it will serve

Children and youth volunteers residing in Bhubaneswar.

Program Duration

A 12-month community-driven program designed to introduce, deepen, and sustain environmental awareness and action in daily life.

Focus Areas

The Unmukt Green Army focuses on fostering environmental action as a way of life. Children reconnect with nature, take ownership of their surroundings, and grow into conscious, responsible stewards of the Earth. The goal is to nurture a mindset of care, action, and sustainability—starting young, staying lifelong. 

Since its inception, the Unmukt Green Army has become a movement of young hands restoring what was lost—not just trees, but trust in the Earth’s ability to heal.

1. Children have created and scattered thousands of seed balls, breathing life into barren patches and forgotten corners of their communities
2. Together, they have replanted thousands of trees lost during Cyclone Fani, bringing back shade, biodiversity, and balance to their streets
3. They’ve led cleanliness drives in neighbourhoods once covered in waste, reminding their communities that clean surroundings are a shared responsibility
4. They’ve prepared natural bio-enzymes, reducing chemical usage in homes and nurturing a culture of safe, sustainable living
    

Through these acts, children have begun to see the Earth not as something separate—but as something sacred.

They understand that a planted tree is more than green—it’s shelter. That clean soil is not just dirt—it’s life. That every seed, every leaf, every drop of water matters. And perhaps most powerfully—they’ve started to act like it.

In every small effort, the environment responds—a patch of grass grows, a corner stays clean, a sapling rises. And in every such moment, the children learn: We are not fixing the planet. We are caring for it. Together.