Wangari Muta Maathai is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which, through networks of rural women, has planted over 30 million trees across Kenya since 1977. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament in the first free elections in a generation, and in 2003 was appointed Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, she is the author of Unbowed: A Memoir, and speaks to organizations around the world. Her newest book, The Challenge for Africa addresses the intricacies of African issues, such as the lack of technological developments, the absence of fair international trade, population pressures and enduring hunger, and the dearth of genuine political and economic leadership.
Maathai stresses the need for Africans to invent and implement their own solutions, rather than relying on foreign aid and Western visions of change, and calls for a revolution in leadership on both a political and individual level.
Bio
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, is the founder of the Green Belt Movement in her home country of Kenya, an environmental group that has restored indigenous forests and assisted rural women by paying them to plant trees in their communities.
Since 1977, it has planted more than 30 million trees in Kenya and has been replicated in dozens of other African countries. Having helped transform Kenya from a vicious dictatorship to a fledgling progressive democracy, Maathai is currently Kenya's Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources and a member of Parliament.
Judy Muller
Judy Muller, an Emmy Award-winning television correspondent and National Public Radio commentator, joined the faculty of the USC Annenberg School for Communication in August 2003, sharing her vast experience as a radio and television reporter with USC students.
Muller, who went to work for ABC News in 1990, covered the 1992 Rodney King trial and ensuing riots, the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the O.J. Simpson criminal and civil trials, among other stories.
As part of a "Nightline" team, she received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots and an Emmy Award for coverage of the Simpson case.
Process whereby simple, low-income national economies are transformed into modern industrial economies. Theories of economic development—the evolution of poor countries dependent on agriculture or resource extraction into prosperous countries with diversified economies—are of critical importance to Third World nations. Economic development projects have typically involved large capital investments in infrastructure (roads, irrigation networks, etc.), industry, education, and financial institutions. More recently, the realization that creating capital-intensive industrial sectors provides only limited employment and can disrupt the rest of the economy has led to smaller-scale economic development programs that aim to utilize the specific resources and natural advantages of developing countries and to avoid disruption of their social and economic structures. See alsoeconomic growth.
(born April 1, 1940, Nyeri, Kenya) Kenyan politician and environmental activist. Maathai was educated in the U.S. and later earned a Ph.D. (1971) at the University of Nairobi, where she then taught veterinary anatomy. In 1977, as a way of conserving land and empowering women, she founded the Green Belt Movement, which recruited women to plant trees in deforested areas; by the early 21st century, it was responsible for the planting of some 30 million trees. Over time the organization also came to include programs in civic and environmental education, advocacy, and job training. Maathai, an outspoken critic of government corruption and supporter of debt cancellation for poor African countries, was elected to Kenya's National Assembly in 2002 and later served as assistant minister of environment, natural resources, and wildlife (2003–05). In 2004 she received the Nobel Prize for Peace, becoming the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize.
I think she makes some great points especially on how recycling plastic will reduce the amount of mosquitoes. I think that no country should solely rely on foreign aide. They should do as much as they can to make positive change themselves. Here are some interesting statistics on Kenya's health:http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/...tatistics.html
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