Swami Prem Parivartan AKA Peepal Baba was born in 1966 in Chandigarh, India. Born to a medical doctor in the Indian Army, he had the opportunity to travel across the country at a young age. He fell in love with the mountains, rivers, and forests at a very young age. By the age of ten, he started planting trees in his neighborhood. The hobby grew into a passion soon enough.
He started planting trees at the age of 11 in Pune. He planted his first tree at Pune Military Station on January 26, 1977. Inspired and motivated by his fourth grade teacher at school, he went on a tree planting spree since that day. He started a hobby club by the name Give Me Trees and gathered his friends and classmates, passersby and strangers, to plant trees and water them.
Give me trees is now a fully registered charitable trust headquartered in Delhi.
Today, Give Me Trees Trust is the largest community based voluntary tree planting and conservation movements in India.
Swami Prem Parivartan is popularly known as Peepal Baba, as his name became synonymous with tree planting work in India, particularly the planting and preservation of the Peepal tree.
The effort is dedicated to planting for three Bs…bees, birds and butterflies. Shade and fruit trees, native trees are the priority for preservation and conservation. Give Me Trees Trust has planted the largest number of Peepal trees in the world.
The Give Me Trees Trust team consists of volunteers from all walks of life. Over 11,500 volunteers and interns across the country help conserve the tree saplings that are planted in various public and private places such as gardens, roadsides, highways, expressways, road medians, schools, colleges, university areas, military stations, mountains, and river banks.
Community education, awareness, and volunteer mobilization campaigns are a priority activity for team Give Me Trees.
Give Me Trees Trust and Peepal Baba have planted and facilitated the planting and preservation of approximately 20 million trees till date. His organization Give me trees Trust has become the largest voluntary tree planting movement in India.
Volunteers from across the country have helped and supported Peepal Baba over the years. He has a post graduate in English Literature. He also has a Masters degree in Mass Communications. He teaches college students for a living and spends the rest of his day traveling and teaching people the art of planting trees.
He promotes natural farming techniques and gives talks on organic farming. He promotes the cause of desi cow, gobar manure, composting, waste management and intensive tree planting in form of green belts and city forests. He has planted over 1.25 million Peepal trees. Other varieties planted include Banyan, Pilkhan, Jamun, Mango, Neem, Sheesham and Babool. He travels across the country and promotes the love for trees among children, social clubs, societies, NGOs, colleges, universities, and other institutions.
Born into an illustrious Jain family of businessmen and academicians, he chose to be a teacher as a career. A voracious reader, books are his first love. His favourite author has always been Ruskin Bond.
Swami Parivartan holds a Postgraduate degree in English Literature from University of Pune. He took to teaching university students in the morning hours and by evening he was a Yoga practitioner and teacher.