Piplantri's 111 Trees for Every Girl

Started in 2006 by former village council leader Shyam Sundar Paliwal in memory of his daughter Kiran, Piplantri's tradition asks every family to plant and nurture 111 trees when a girl is born, alongside a community-funded trust for her education that unlocks at 18 only if she has stayed in school and unmarried. Run through the community organization Kiran Nidhi Sansthan, the practice has planted close to 400,000 trees on former grazing commons and coincided with a dramatic recovery in local groundwater levels. Every girl in the village now attends school, Rajasthan's state government promotes the model statewide, and the tree-planting ritual is now part of the state school curriculum.