Issue date: 9/21/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Gamaliel Ortiz Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, with the help of Sacramento City Councilman Ray Tretheway, plants a tree in the south end of the Capitol. Earlier in the day, Maathai gave a lecture at Sacramento State. [Click to enlarge]

Wangari Maathai said she did not plan on making an impact on the world at first. She did not see this far ahead when she first started.

"When I first started planting trees I was not thinking ahead, I was simply responding to the needs of the community," she said.

In 2004, her efforts, some starting from just a seed, won her the Noble Peace Prize.

Sacramento State students sat on the floor, and stood lining the walls to hear Maathai speak about issues of the environment, women's rights and even her own personal struggles of uniting a country today in the University Union.

Maathai is the author of her memoir "Unbowed" and the founder of the Green Belt Movement, an organization that works to restore Kenya's environment by planting trees.

President Alexander Gonzalez introduced Maathai as "one of the people in the world making a difference," and said it was "a historic event in campus history."

Gonzalez said her message was especially important to students who are the future.

"We are all interrelated…we don't just live on one piece of the world…the world is all of us," Gonzalez said.

Maathai said 50 percent of Kenyans live on just one dollar a day, and that poverty in her country is a cycle.

"Parents are too poor to educate their children, they are not able to think about things of the environment because they are too busy living just today," she said.

Maathai said she encourages young people to live beyond themselves.

"Money doesn't matter sometimes…If you live beyond yourself and sacrifice of yourself so that others live better…you will be happy," Maathai said.

Adina Zerwig can be reached at azerwig@statehornet.com.

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