Sadiman, the Unsung Sustainability Hero

Dali is the name of a small village in Wonogiri District, Central Java, Indonesia where an old man named Sadiman live his humble life. For 20 years, Sadiman have been struggling by himself to plant thousands of trees in the Gendol Forest, an area at one of the slopes of Mount Lawu, which was burnt to the ground by the wild fire in 1964. As a result of this fire, the villages surrounding the forest had been suffering from drought (during dry season) and flood (during the rainy season). The disasters were mainly because there were no trees left to store the water underground.

Sadiman and his tree seedlings (Rappler.com)

Knowing that someone had to do something about this, Sadiman started to plant trees in the devastated forest area. He has been planting trees on the 100 hectares of the forest land in the last 20 years. He has been doing this by himself. Sadiman's sacrifice is simply astonishing. Being a simple farmer, he himself is struggling to get money. However, his poor living condition did not stop him to spend his own hardly-earned money to buy the seedlings that will be planted on the forest. A banyan tree seedling can cost him 50,000 - 10,000 Rupiah (AUD 5 to 10). That's a lot of money for him. To get around this situation, he cultivated clove tree seedlings at his yards. Ten clove tree seedlings worth a banyan tree seedlings.

Once dried, this stream is now recovered because of Sadiman's work (Rappler.com)

Certainly, his dedication is beyond question. He had been called "crazy person" for many times because of doing this. Some of his seedlings were also pulled out of the ground by irresponsible people. However, these didn't stop him from planting the trees. Consistently, he keeps planting the trees and taking care of them to make sure they grow big. He has been doing this since the early 1990's. Thanks to his persistent hard work, the forest starts to recover. More and more springs and streams can be reclaimed to provide water supply for the villages on the foot of Mount Lawu. Those who called him "crazy" once started to realize the importance of this old man's work and more and more people are getting aware on the importance of the forest.

His story spreads out and reach the media. He was selected as one of the recipients of "2016 Kick Andy Heroes" from a TV station. However, he said that he never thinks to get any award because it's not important for him. In an interview he says, "I don't want to be treated as a special person. All I want is to do everything in my power to make people having a better life."