One Tree — Wangari Maathai and the Movement That Planted 50 Million

One woman, one seedling, in a small clearing outside Nairobi in 1977. By the time the movement she started was done, over 50 million trees had been planted across Kenya — and she'd become the first African woman to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize.

This short story follows Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement from its modest beginning through the arrests, the beatings, and the government opposition she faced for standing in the way of projects that threatened Kenya's remaining green spaces — and why the Nobel committee saw her tree-planting movement as fundamentally about democracy and peace, not just the environment. Includes a "Behind the Story" section separating documented fact from narrative detail.

An 8-10 minute read about how the biggest movements sometimes start with the smallest, most repeatable action.