Wangari Maathai facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Wangarĩ Muta Maathai
Maathai in 2005
Born	Wangarĩ Muta (1940-04-01)1 April 1940 Ihithe village, Tetu, Nyeri District, Kenya
Died	25 September 2011(2011-09-25) (aged 71) Nairobi, Kenya
Alma mater	University of Nairobi (PhD) University of Pittsburgh (MS) Benedictine College (BS) University of Giessen
Occupation	Environmentalist, political activist, writer
Known for	Green Belt Movement
Children	Wanjira Mathai
Awards	Right Livelihood Award (1984) Nobel Peace Prize (2004) Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize (2006)

Wangarĩ Muta Maathai ( 1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a Kenyan social, environmental and a political activist. She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

As an academic and the author of several books, Maathai was not only an activist but also an intellectual who has made significant contributions to thinking about ecology, development, gender, and African cultures and religions.

Early life and education

Maathai was born on 1 April 1940 in the village of Ihithe, Nyeri District, in the central highlands of the colony of Kenya. Her family was Kikuyu and had lived in the area for several generations.

Around 1943, Maathai's family relocated to a White-owned farm in the Rift Valley, near the town of Nakuru, where her father had found work. There was no schooling available on the farm where her father worked, so she returned to Ihithe with her mother. Her father remained at the farm. At the age of eight, she joined her elder brothers at Ihithe Primary School.

At the age of 11, Maathai moved to St. Cecilia's Intermediate Primary School, a boarding school at the Mathari Catholic Mission in Nyeri. Maathai studied at St. Cecilia's for four years.

During this time, she became fluent in English and converted to Catholicism. When she completed her studies there in 1956, she was rated first in her class, and was granted admission to the only Catholic high school for girls in Kenya, Loreto High School in Limuru.

John F. Kennedy, then a United States senator, agreed to fund a program that was called the Kennedy Airlift. It allowed scholarships for promisimg students from African countries. Maathai received a scholarship to study at Mount St. Scholastica College (now Benedictine College), in Atchison, Kansas, where she majored in biology, with minors in chemistry and German.

She received her Bachelor of Science degree in 1964. Then, she studied at the University of Pittsburgh for a master's degree in biology. Her graduate studies there were funded by the Africa-America Institute, and during her time in Pittsburgh. In January 1966, Maathai received her MSc in biological sciences, and was appointed to a position as research assistant to a professor of zoology at University College of Nairobi, Kenya.

When she arrived at the university to start her new job, she was informed that it had been given to someone else. Maathai believed this was because of gender and tribal bias. After a two-month job search, Professor Reinhold Hofmann, from the University of Giessen in Germany, offered her a job as a research assistant in the microanatomy section of the newly established Department of Veterinary Anatomy in the School of Veterinary Medicine at University College of Nairobi.

Career outline

• In 1967, at the urging of Professor Hofmann, she travelled to the University of Giessen in Germany in pursuit of a doctorate. She studied both at Giessen and the University of Munich.
• In the spring of 1969, she returned to Nairobi to continue studies at the University College of Nairobi as an assistant lecturer.
• In 1971, she became the first Eastern African woman to receive a PhD, her doctorate in veterinary anatomy, from the University College of Nairobi, which became the University of Nairobi the following year.
• Maathai became a senior lecturer in anatomy in 1975, chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy in 1976 and associate professor in 1977. She was the first woman in Nairobi appointed to any of these positions.
• In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights.
• In 1979, she took a job at the Economic Commission for Africa through the United Nations Development Programme, in Lusaka, Zambia.
• In 1979, Maathai got the position of chairperson of the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK). she continued to be reelected every year until she retired from the position in 1987.
• In January 2002, Maathai returned to teaching as the Dorothy McCluskey Visiting Fellow for Conservation at the Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She remained there until June 2002, teaching a course on sustainable development focused on the work of the Green Belt Movement.
• Maathai campaigned for parliament in the 2002 elections and won with an overwhelming 98% of the vote.
• Between January 2003 and November 2005 she served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki.
• In 2003, she founded the Mazingira Green Party of Kenya.
• On 28 March 2005, Maathai was elected the first president of the African Union's Economic, Social and Cultural Council and was appointed a goodwill ambassador for an initiative aimed at protecting the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem.
• Until her death in 2011, Maathai served on the Eminent Advisory Board of the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa (AWEPA).

Activism

Wangari Maathai speaks about deforestation

At the University of Nairobi Maathai campaigned for equal benefits for the women working on the staff of the university.

In addition to her work at the University of Nairobi, she became involved in a number of civic organisations in the early 1970s. She was a member of the Nairobi branch of the Kenya Red Cross Society, becoming its director in 1973. She was also a member of the Kenya Association of University Women.

In 1974, she became a member of the local board of the Environment Liaison Centre. The Centre encouraged non-governmental organisations to participate in the work of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Maathai also joined the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK). Through her work at these various volunteer associations, she understood that the root of most of Kenya's problems was environmental degradation.

She started the Green Belt Movement. Maathai encouraged the women of Kenya to plant tree nurseries throughout the country, searching nearby forests for seeds to grow trees native to the area. She agreed to pay the women a small stipend for each seedling which was later planted elsewhere.

In 1986, with funding from UNEP, the movement expanded throughout Africa and led to the foundation of the Pan-African Green Belt Network. Forty-five representatives from fifteen African countries travelled to Kenya over the next three years to learn how to set up similar programs in their own countries to combat desertification, deforestation, water crises, and rural hunger.

2004 Nobel Peace Prize

Wangarĩ Maathai was awarded the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her "contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." Maathai was the first African woman to win the prestigious award.

Personal life

In April 1966, she met Mwangi Mathai, another Kenyan who had studied in America, who would later become her husband.

She and Mwangi Mathai married in May 1969. Later that year, she became pregnant with her first son, Waweru. Her daughter, Wanjira, was born in December 1971. In 1974, Maathai's family expanded to include her third child, son Muta.

Maathai and her husband, Mwangi Mathai, separated in 1977. Mwangi filed for divorce in 1979. Shortly after the divorce, her former husband sent a letter via his lawyer demanding that Maathai drop his surname. She chose to add an extra "a" instead of changing her name.

Wangari Maathai quotes

• “Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect.”
• “The generation that destroys the environment is not the generation that pays the price.”
• “There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.”
• “A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go.”
• “When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and hope.”
• “What people see as fearlessness is really persistence.”

Death

Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer on 25 September 2011.

Her remains were cremated and buried at the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies in Nairobi.

Interesting facts about Wangari Maathai

Maathai in Nairobi with Chancellor of the Exchequer (and later Prime Minister) Gordon Brown in 2005

Maathai and then U.S. Senator Barack Obama in Nairobi in 2006

• As a student, Maathai was involved with the Legion of Mary, whose members attempted "to serve God by serving fellow human beings."
• On her retirn to Kenya from the USA, Maathai dropped her forename, preferring to be known by her birth name, Wangarĩ Muta.
• In 1960s, she rented a small shop in the city, and established a general store, at which her sisters worked.
• In 1969, her husband campaigned for a seat in Parliament, narrowly losing. In 1976, he campaigned again and won.
• Maathai became the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy, receiving her PhD from the University of Nairobi in Kenya.
• Maathai was an elected member of the Parliament of Kenya.
• In 1992, she was shortly jailed for her political activism.
• In 2001, she was arrested twice and released without being charged.
• In 2006, Maathai was one of the eight flag-bearers at the 2006 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony.
• In August 2006, she met then United States Senator Barack Obama when he traveled to Kenya. They planted a tree together in Uhuru Park in Nairobi.
• Maathai was one of the founders of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

Recognition

Wangarĩ Maathai memorial trees and garden at the University of Pittsburgh

• In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "converting the Kenyan ecological debate into mass action for reforestation".
• She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council.
• In 1991, she received the Goldman Environmental Prize in San Francisco and the Hunger Project's Africa Prize for Leadership in London.
• In 2006, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Connecticut College.
• In June 2009, Maathai was named as one of PeaceByPeace.com's first peace heroes.
• In 2012, Wangarĩ Gardens opened in Washington, DC.
• In October 2016, Forest Road in Nairobi was renamed to Wangarĩ Maathai Road for her efforts to oppose several attempts to degrade forests and public parks through the Green Belt Movement.
• In 2015, UNESCO published the graphic novel Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement as part of their UNESCO Series on Women in African History. As an artistic and visual interpretation intended for private or public use in classrooms, it tells the story of Maathai and the movement she started.

Wangarĩ Maathai Forest Champion Award

In 2012, the Collaborative Partnership on Forests CPF, an international consortium of 14 organisations, secretariats and institutions working on international forest issues, launched the inaugural Wangarĩ Maathai Forest Champion Award.

Winners have included:

• 2012 – Narayan Kaji Shrestha, with an honourable mention to Kurshida Begum
• 2014 – Martha Isabel "Pati" Ruiz Corzo, with an honourable mention to Chut Wutty
• 2015 – Gertrude Kabusimbi Kenyangi
• 2017 – Maria Margarida Ribeiro da Silva, a Brazilian forestry activist
• 2019 – Léonidas Nzigiyimpa, a Burundian forestry activist
• 2022 – Cécile Ndjebet, a Cameroonian activist

Selected publications

• The bottom is heavy too: even with the Green Belt Movement : the Fifth Edinburgh Medal Address (1994)
• Bottle-necks of development in Africa (1995)
• The Canopy of Hope: My Life Campaigning for Africa, Women, and the Environment (2002)
• Unbowed: A Memoir (2006) ISBN: 9780307492333
• Reclaiming rights and resources women, poverty and environment (2007)
• Rainwater Harvesting (2008)
• State of the world's minorities 2008: events of 2007 (2008)
• Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril. (2010) chapter Nelson, Michael P. and Kathleen Dean Moore (eds.). Trinity University Press, ISBN: 9781595340665
• Replenishing the Earth (2010) ISBN: 978-0-307-59114-2

Honours

See also

In Spanish: Wangari Maathai para niños

• Black Nobel Prize laureates
• List of female Nobel laureates
• List of peace activists
• Mottainai
• Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD-IV), 2008.
• Women's Environment & Development Organization