When Ellyanne Wanjiku Chlystun was barely four years old, Nobel laureate and well-known tree planter Prof. Wangari Maathai inspired her to take action on the issue.
In kindergarten, I was working on a project on individuals who had changed the world, like Florence Nightingale, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King.
But it was this incredible Kenyan woman, Wangari Maathai, who raised awareness of the need of tree planting by planting millions of trees in her community.
Maathai promoted the idea that women might help the environment by planting trees to delay deforestation and desertification and to offer a fuel source, particularly in rural regions.
In 2004, she was dubbed the first “green” Nobel laureate and became the first black African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1977, Prof. Maathai established the Green Belt Movement. By the time she passed away in 2011, it had planted an estimated 45 million trees in Kenya.
Ellyanne returned home to share what she had discovered with her mother, Dorothy, determined to follow in her footsteps.
