“It’s our turn to help the world.”
In 2004, Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in
organizing The Greenbelt Movement which had planted over thirty million trees in
Kenya and east Africa. Wangari was a biology professor at the University of
Nairobi in Kenya. In a meeting with other Kenyan women, she learned that the
fertile and forested land of her youth had been devastated. All the trees had
been cut down for coffee and tea plantations. Local women now had to walk
miles for firewood, and the water had become polluted with chemicals and runoffs
from the plantations.
She knew that the solution to the plight of these women was to plant trees, to
reforest the land. So she and a few women decided to begin immediately. They
went to a large park in Nairobi and planted seven trees. However, five of these
trees died. (The two that survived are still there today.) Their initial success rate
was 28.5%, discouraging by anybody’s standards. But they didn’t give up. They
learned from that experience and the women carried their learnings back to their
villages. Gradually, they became skilled at planting trees. Other villages saw
what they were doing and, over time, a large network of villages became
engaged in tree planting. In less than 30 years, thirty million trees were
flourishing in 600 communities, in 20 nations. Villages now have clean water,
shade and local firewood, improved health and community vitality.
What if they had given up when the first five trees died? What if they had walked
away and left it to the government or the U.N. to plant trees?
And yet, how is it possible to go from two trees to 30 million trees in just 27
years? Or, to go from a mere dozen men to 9 million people acting as one
unified body in just a few weeks, as happened with the Polish Solidarity
Movement? This exponential growth is one gift of living in a network of
relationships. If the issue is meaningful, people pay attention, see its value, and
begin to talk to others. Such passion moves like wildfire through our networks
and communities. Suddenly, we’ve reached millions of people and created largescale
change. And it’s always true that these large powerful changes begin with
only a few people who decide to help.
