 Degradation and desertification are serious issues for Burkina Faso. Around 470,000 hectares of land are degraded each year through a combination of natural and human factors. Trees are cut down for firewood and to make space for agriculture, and as the climate changes, droughts are becoming more prolonged and the weather more unpredictable. The result? Formably, arable farmlands are transforming into desert with devastating human and environmental consequences. However, activists like El-Haje Zarome-Lasane are working hard to turn things in the other direction. A farmer from the village of Gasolkoli in the Tangomayel district of Som province in the Sahil region of Burkina Faso, he's been working on restoration since 1993. My name is Bobby Kasinga. I'm from the village of Keteria. I'm from the village of Bishrula. I'm from the village of Keteria. I'm from Burkina Faso. I'm from Burkina Faso. I'm from the village of Burkina Faso. He's personally restored 10 hectares of completely naked and barren land and played a major role in mobilizing his village to do the same, resulting in around 200 hectares of total restoration in the area. However, at the beginning it was not easy and villagers laughed at him, but he believed in his ancestors' wisdom. Zarome's own commitment, hard work and generosity have also played a major role in the restoration success. He invests significant amounts of his own resources into the work, spending up to 180 US dollars a year buying trees and hiring people to help him with the restoration activities on his land. He's readily offered his knowledge and skills and free seedlings from his nursery to other villagers. Since 2003, he's been supported by local NGO, Topolga. When we took Zarome, it was not the commitment of the entire village who supported him, and the only one who supported him was his courage and will. Word of Ghassel Kohli's restoration success is spreading. This is welcome news for Zarome, who strongly believes that widespread effort is needed to halt or reverse desertification. He's hopeful that partners and actors within the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahil Initiative, GGWSSI, can attract the means to help make this kind of large-scale restoration happen. Adama Dolcombe, senior staff at the Ministry of Environment, Green Economy and Climate Change of Burkina Faso, a national coordinator for the Great Green Wall of the Sahara and Sahil Initiative, is confident that achievements on the ground, like that of Zarome, show that it's possible to green the Sahil. I think that the example of Zarome is quite different because we feel that it's a leader who is convinced and who wants to bring other actors to marry the activity I was in, in a vision of a fairly rapid scale of these good practices. Our role is to accompany these actors so that they can fully play their role. Topolga and the GGWSSI are now setting up an intensive training in leadership, restoration technique and raising awareness for village leaders across the Sahil region. For this, we have organized a training with the Great Green Wall, which has been an intensive training for volunteers, volunteers who are going to engage in their entourage, their friends, their parents so that each one has a different degree depending on their capacity, each one tries to do something in their village to recover the land. And so that at some point, we have in each village a critical mass of people who fund the recovery. Back in Gasolkoli, Zarome will continue to plant and is committed to sharing his knowledge and passion with whoever he wants to learn.