Prasiddhi Singh was 4 years old when she saw the trees in her neighborhood fall in Chengalpattu, India.
It was 2016, and Cyclone Vardah had just devastated her community in Tamil Nadu. Something stayed with her that afternoon, a question that would not let her go: What is our relationship really with the nature around us? At 7, she began planting trees in response. By 8, she had already planted 14 fruit forests in schools and community spaces, and the government of India awarded her the Bal Puraskar, the highest civilian honor that exists for a child.
In 2018, she founded her own foundation, and since then her biodiverse forests—not single-species plantations, but complete ecosystems that provide food and shelter—have already been established in more than 120 locations across the country. She has spoken at TEDx, at two UN climate summits, and was the youngest speaker in the history of the ChangeNOW Summit in Paris. She is 12 years old and has already planted more than 150.000 trees.