If our favourite name in the whole world is our own, why not name a tree after it? If trees are our biggest wealth, why not keep them in a bank?

Working on these two concepts, Jamshedpur social outfit Change India Foundation, comprising40 students and young professionals, have founded a tree bank and are inviting people to plant them near the steel city or alongside NH-33, state highways and roads after their names.

On Sunday, the outfit planted 20,000 saplings and seeds of fruit-bearing plants at Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary across 10 hectares. Emboldened by their success, the young outfit set up this June is thinking big and aims to plant 20 lakh trees by 2020 with help from the green bank and foresters.

Sunday's success is no flash in the pan, maintains Biswajit Prasad (26), a junior engineer in Tata Steel and the convener of Change India Foundation.

"When we started our collection drive, we were shaky," Prasad said.

"But still, we used social media like Facebook and WhatApp to let people know about our initiative. The great thing about Jamshedpur is people here are open to new things," he smiled, talking about how people gave them saplings and seeds, even Java plum ( jamun) and mango, freely.

"Change India Foundation managed to collect a respectable 20,000 seeds and saplings," Prasad said, adding they planted them in Dalma with help from forest department officials from 7am to 3pm.

"The effort felt so great that we immediately brainstormed on the tree bank concept and held talks with forest department officials," he said.

Prasad said the tree bank would collect seeds and saplings from individuals and keep them in custody of the forest department. During plantation, these will be used. If someone who donates the sapling or seed wants it to be named after him or her, the outfit will arrange it.

"We'll tag the name while storing the seed or sapling in the bank and later, when the tree is planted, place a board with the name. Should you want to volunteer and look after the tree, you are welcome," he said, giving out their organisation's number 7209450802 and email id ciforganisation@gmail.com so that more people could contact them.

"Just drop us a line or call us up if you want to donate a sapling or seeds. Our members will get in touch with you at your convenience. We will post the names of donors in our Facebook homepage with photographs," he said. "We will personally monitor nurturing of seeds and saplings and would ask forest department to put tree guards on plantation spots."

Will you contact Change India Foundation? Tell ttkhand@abpmail.com