Around 26 years ago, Sehmus Erginoglu looked at a patch of wasteland in his hometown of Mardin, in southern Turkey, and decided to do something about it.
The site was a rubbish dump. He cleared it out, laid water pipes, and dug around 50 wells from natural springs to keep saplings alive in the dry climate.
Then he started planting.
He was never paid for any of it. A former truck driver, he funded the work largely from his own savings, with the Turkish authorities donating pine saplings along the way. Today the site holds around 11,000 trees, and he estimates he's planted more than 30,000 across neighbouring villages.
Now in his seventies, he still goes out to tend them almost every day. Families picnic in the shade of trees that didn't exist a generation ago.
He didn't wait for someone else to fix it. He just started planting.
