With the recent release of the movie The Lorax based on the famous Eco-tale by Dr. Seuss, I have a modern day "Lorax," an American credited with planting 1 million trees in his native Ethiopia. The amazing personal project of Gashaw Tahir (SAY: Gah-sha Ta-ear) is even promoting understanding between Christians and Muslims.
Since 2006, Tahir has planted more than 1 million trees in Ethiopia using his own modest family income and despite his own physical limitations from knee surgeries. His project to uplift the people with jobs and hope while restoring the environment earned him recognition by the United Nations as a Green National Hero. It began almost a decade ago when Gashaw, now 51, visited Ethiopia for a family wedding. He found the formerly green hills of his native land hot, dry and eroded due to years of deforestation. As people cut trees for firewood, the heat increased and rivers that once flowed throughout the region dried up. Diseases such as malaria increased along with the oppressive heat. "In America, you hardly feel it here. But there you need an umbrella to walk because you cannot stand the heat," he says. "That is the reason I wanted to take action." Prompted by leadership training he received through Landmark Education, an international personal and professional growth, training and development firm, Gashaw founded the Greenland Development Foundation project in 2006. He started by hiring 450 young people, both Christians and Muslims, to plant trees on a two-acre plot. He saw the project as an opportunity to promote religious tolerance to help youth earn money for clothes and schoolbooks. The project grew as he acquired more land and employed more young workers. Now, woman farmers are planting corn, carrots, fruit trees, and other vegetables to feed their families and to sell food to generate income. Gashaw plans to hire 1,000 more young people to plant fruit trees to stop erosion, provide shade and help cool the climate. People will also be less likely to cut them down for firewood because of the food they produce, he says. "My motto is making Africa green again, not only by just planting trees, but by planting fruit trees that will sustain, that will make a difference in people's lives," Tahir says. Gashaw lives in Los Angeles. His work in Ethiopia is among more than 100,000 community projects around the world spawned by Landmark Education. To learn more and read an article by Gashaw.
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