Wednesday,  January  6  at  7:30  pm

Taking Root:
The Vision of Wangari Mathaai

by Wangari Maathai

This award winning documentary tells the story of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement in Kenya to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy — a movement for which this charismatic woman became an iconic inspiration.  Trees provide shade, prevent soil erosion, supply firewood and building materials, and produce nutritious fruit to combat malnutrition.  With this in mind, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization encouraging rural women to plant trees.  A seemingly innocuous idea, Maathai soon discovered that tree planting had a ripple effect of empowering change.  Grassroots women soon found themselves working successively against deforestation, poverty, ignorance, embedded economic interests, and political oppression, until they became a national political force! Today there are more than 6,000 Green Belt nurseries throughout Kenya that generate income for 150,000 people, and thirty-five million trees have deeply altered the physical and social landscape of the country.  Maathai became a member of the new Kenyan Parliament and Assistant Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources.

http://takingrootfilm.com