Wangari+Maathai

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Wangari Maathai is a Nobel peace Prize winner and te first African woman to ever win one. She is an enviromentalist turned politician. She was born on April 1 1940 in Nyeri, Kenya. She started planting trees in her backyard at a very young age. For high school, she attended Loreto Girls High School in Limuru,Kenya. For university, she received a scholarship to Mount St. Scholastica College (now [|Benedictine College]), in [|Atchison, Kansas]. She studied biology,chemistry and German. In 1964, she received her Bachelor of Science Degree and then was off to the University of Pittsburg for a master's degree in biology. In 1966. she met Mwangi Mathai. She also opened a store and hired her sisters, but in 1967, she went to Germany and studied at the University of Giessen and University of Munich. In 1969, she returned to Kenya and worked at the University of Nairobi. Later that year she married Mwangi Mathai. In 1971, she became the first woman in Eastern Africa to get a Ph.D. In 1973, she became the director for the [|Kenya Red Cross Society.] In 1977, she started the Green Belt Movement, a non-profit NGO,women’s civil society organizations that 'advocates' human rights and campaigning peace. Today the GBM has planted over 40 million trees over Africa. " **Our Vision for the Future** Our goal in the next decade is to plant one billion trees worldwide. A healthy natural world is at the heart of an equitable and peaceful society. And protecting the environment is something every individual can take part in." Her husband influenced her to start using her voice to help the enviroment and he promised to help his constituency if he won the election. She then started a government project called Envirocare which was meant to help conserve and protect the enviroment but it failed. She tried again and succeeded. In 2004, she became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her devotion to conserving and preserving the enviroment, her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. She currently lives in Kenya and still promotes peace and enviromental conservation. She is also works as a politician now.