Wangari Maathai, world-renowned environmentalist and advocate for women's rights, will discuss how her Green Belt Movement in Kenya has evolved into an international human rights campaign. Matthai's free public talk will be Wednesday October 3rd, 7:30 p.m., at the International Center, on the World Learning/SIT (School for International Training) campus in Brattleboro, VT.

On World Environment Day in 1977, Wangari Maathai began urging Kenya's farmers (70 percent of whom are women) to plant "greenbelts" of trees, which would stop soil erosion, provide shade, and create a source of lumber and firewood. It was the culmination of numerous public forums, which identified environmental degradation as a pressing concern. Firewood was in short supply, as were fruits to cure malnutrition in children. Pesticides and herbicides used to grow cash crops were polluting the water.

In addition to the Green Belt Movement's program to distribute seedlings to rural women, an incentive system was set up for each seedling that survived. As a result, more than 50,000 small-scale farmers and households have planted over 15 million trees, new income has been produced for 80,000 people in Kenya alone, and the initiative has expanded to over 30 African countries, the U.S., and Haiti. The movement has also made it possible for more than one million Kenyan children to plant trees on school grounds.

Wangari Maathai went on to win the Hunger Project's 1992 Africa Prize for Leadership, and has received several other international honors, including the "Global 500 Award" from the UN Environmental Protection Agency.

At first the Kenyan government and press heralded Wangari Maathai. However, she finds herself at odds with them now, because of certain positions she has taken. In one instance, when Maathai denounced President Daniel arap Moi's proposal to erect a sixty-two-story skyscraper in the middle of Nairobi's largest park, the government subjected her to harassment and police detention. Years after President arap Moi gave up on the project, government security forces severely beat Maathai and several other women, who were rallying at the park site on behalf of political prisoners.

In Kerry Kennedy Cuomo's 1999 book Speak Truth to Power, Wangari Matthai was profiled alongside the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and other Nobel Peace Prize winners, as one of the world's 50 leading human rights defenders.