In celebration of Women’s History Month, Women Of Green will be featuring each week a film about woman of vision who has dedicated her life to the health and well-being of this Big Beautiful Planet and the beings that live on it. First up is the legendary environmental activist, Wangari Maathai, who became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Three decades ago, she suggested to rural women in her native Kenya that they plant trees for firewood and to stop soil erosion — an act that grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, defend human rights, and fight government injustice. The tree-planting groups that formed gave the women a reason to come together and become involved in resolving their communities’ challenges.

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai tells the story of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement and follows Maathai, the movement’s founder and the first environmentalist and African woman to win the Nobel Prize. Maathai discovered her life’s work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. They told her they were walking long distances for firewood, and that clean water was scarce. The soil was disappearing from their fields, and their children were suffering from malnutrition. “Well, why not plant trees?” she suggested.