Super cyclone Amphan hit the coastal areas of West Bengal and Odisha on May 20 resulting in major devastation, claiming at least 86 lives and affected thousands of households, standing crops, and completely disrupted water and electricity supply in the region. According to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), over 5,000 trees were uprooted due to the storm.
With a focus on environmental restoration, My Canvas Talk, a YouTube partner programme platform from Kolkata, has pledged to help restore the ecology and has taken an initiative to plant trees all over West Bengal. The platform will plant one tree for every 1,000 views they earn on their YouTube channel.
Since its inception on May 1, the channel has crossed over 75,000 views and the team has begun by planting more than 75 trees. With active partnership and support from Bakuli Aid Foundation, an NGO in Kolkata working for environmental conservation, the platform aims to sustain this into a life-long programme. "We pay them the price for the plantation of each plant, they have already begun planting saplings in schools, colleges, and other areas in and around Kolkata. The money is generated from the videos that are being put up on our platform. The aim is to get back the ecological cover of West Bengal that was shattered by the supercyclone Amphan," says Rahul Basak, co-founder of the platform.
Co-founded by Rahul and his friend Amit Kumar Mahishya Das, My Canvas Talk is the first stage based talk platform with its roots in Kolkata. When Rahul and his co-founder looked through social media platforms, they saw that a lot of people, groups, organisations have been trying to crowdfund money to help the green cover of West Bengal recover from the storm's devastation. That's when this idea struck them. "No one else has done something like this yet. And we are planning to continue this as a lifelong project. In the near future, if there is a time when we garner 1000 views per minute, we will plant one tree for every minute. We are quite determined to take this initiative forward," adds Rahul.
My Canvas Talk was officially launched in 2019 and their first video was uploaded in December last year. Stories have the ability to motivate people and therefore, the platform provides a space to individuals and promotes their incredible journeys across the globe. With the aim of re-inventing the power of stories, the platform has been able to complete two seasons of the Talk where celebrated faces from across the country participated: Saurav Das (Bengali Actor), Saayoni Ghosh (Bengali Actor), Satrajit Sen (Award-Winning Director), Monisha Pailan (Acid Attack Victim and Activist), Arijit Hajra (India’s first Techno-Spiritual Entrepreneur, CEO of Think Again Lab, Space App India Lead at NASA Space App Challenge), Pauline Laravoire (Environmentalist, Impact Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Y-East, Sustainability Director at Techno India University) and numerous others.
Given the COVID-19 situation, the platform is also planning on doing a series of virtual talks where people can send in their stories, recorded on video and send it to them. "We are trying to rope in YouTubers, content creators as they already have a camera, lighting, recording set up and do not have to start from scratch. Let's see how this goes," concludes Rahul.
