Kenyan Woman wins Nobel Peace Prize.

More:

"Wangari Maathai

I know that I am doing this work for all who cherish freedom and justice and without such ideals, we can't save this planet.


Kenya
Forests

Starting with a small tree nursery in her back yard, Wangari Maathai launched Kenya's Green Belt Movement in 1977. A grassroots tree planting organization composed primarily of women, the Green Belt Movement aims to curtail the devastating social and environmental effects of deforestation and desertification.


Maathai began her efforts not only to help curb soil erosion, but also to help the burgeoning population become self-sustaining in its use of fuel wood and to create an income generating activity for rural communities. There are now 5,000 grassroots nurseries throughout Kenya and over 20 million trees have been planted. Meanwhile, the Green Belt Movement conducts seminars for those interested in replicating their approach and an international chapter has been founded to expand the movement beyond Africa.........."

http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipients/recipientProfile.cfm?recipientID=29



And: http://www.sit.edu/news/archive/maathai.html


And:

"Forest profile: Wangari Maathai
Mobilising the mothers
Posted: 01 Aug 2000

by Katy Salmon

In October 1999, Wangari Maathai, founder of Kenya's Green Belt Movement celebrated the first anniversary of her battle to save Karura Forest,­ a vital lung for Kenya's ever-expanding capital city of Nairobi. Here, she talks to Katy Salmon about her hopes for the new century.
"You should not be disempowered by the problems you see, you must be empowered by hope. Despite all the problems we go through, I have hope for the new millennium.


Wangari Maathai
© GBM

We will go with a lot of baggage from the 20th century but there is hope and tomorrow seems like it is possible."

Sitting in her 'office', the leafy garden of the Green Belt Movement (GBM), Wangari Maathai points to the trees above her head: "I use trees as a sign of hope. They are alive. They keep going, don't give up. There is hope in the environmental movement. You can do something positive for change, set out to work, plant trees, dig trenches ­ not just complain."


Professor Maathai, a fearless and outspoken environmental campaigner, has been clobbered by baton-wielding riot police, threatened with female circumcision and told she has no moral grounds to speak because she is a divorcee. And all she wants to do is plant trees.


Land-grabbers


Her high-profile campaign to save Karura Forest ­ a vital lung for Kenya's ever-expanding capital ­ from 'landgrabbing' has brought her into head-on confrontation with the government. In deals that have shocked the nation, this public land has been allocated to private developers, eager to line their own pockets by looting the nation's heritage. Government files listing the names of companies allocated plots in Karura have mysteriously disappeared.

In January 1999, Nairobi erupted into three days of riots after thousands of protesters, who marched to Karura to plant trees, were beaten and tear-gassed by riot police and General Service Unit personnel. Pictures of blood-soaked students were beamed around the world, leading international figures, such as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, to speak out in Maathai's defence.


"With a leadership that is so corrupt, it is difficult to protect the environment," says Maathai. "People tend to think forests are government property and the government takes advantage of their ignorance. We emphasise they are public goods for the common good, for now and for the future.


"By howling and yelling, we've really raised it to the national level. People have started understanding forests don't belong to governments. Local people ­ architects, bankers, lawyers ­ don't want to be involved in the destruction of Karura. By making noise, you make the land useless."


This is not the first time Maathai has taken on the government. In 1989, she shamed international investors, including Robert Maxwell, into pulling out from building a 60-storey office block on Uhuru Park, the only green area in Nairobi's congested city centre. Maathai's ability to mobilise international support was crucial to her success: "We told our colleagues internationally: 'Check if your government is involved. Why would you want to destroy a small park in Nairobi when no one would touch Central Park?'"............."

http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=39


But, like the rest of us, she ain't all reason and sense!


"HIV virus deliberately created: Wangari Maathai

AFP[ SATURDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2004 10:26:50 PM ]

NAIROBI: Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, on Saturday reiterated her claim that the AIDS virus was a deliberately created biological agent.


"Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.

"Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet," Maathai told a press conference in Nairobi a day after winning the prize for her work in human rights and reversing deforestation across Africa.

"It's true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq," she said............"

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/879829.cms


And:

"Wangari Maathai:
"You Strike The Woman ..."
Despite the odds and occasional threats,
Wangari Maathai presses on
in her campaign to keep Kenya green
by Priscilla Sears
One of the articles in Making It Happen (IC#28)
Spring 1991, Page 55
Copyright (c)1991, 1996 by Context Institute | To order this issue ...


I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me.

All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it's the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet - at least everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet.

- Wangari Maathai

Several years ago I saw a performance by a touring company of women from South Africa called "You Strike the Woman, You Strike the Rock." It was advertised as a song of "strength and endurance and joy." I remembered it as I talked with Wangari Maathai, the woman who founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and who was in the United States to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws from Williams College, to speak at the Open Space Environmental Conference in San Francisco, and to address various environmental groups on behalf of her threatened movement. I met her in Hanover, NH, where she stopped for 2 days to meet with faculty and students whom she had met through the Dartmouth College Environmental Studies Foreign Study Program in Kenya.........."

http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC28/Sears.htm


http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_wangari_maathai.htm

a bright moment in an otherwise unnerving world.

just for information:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35185

Prolly part of lots of bright moments we never get to hear about in our self-centred, sensation hungry media.

I'm sure you're right dlowan.