OCTOBER 14, 2009 ] THE MEREDITH HERALD • Educating Women to Excel \ VOL XXVI • ISSUE VI School Board Elections (SEE PAGE 3) ^''IrSrl's-SdGfet^^nd.The f2009:UH.9en.eralAs- ■ ;^R»rtgjTen»on inSchool • feso.ara'f'feofeoris I'” -'Page 4- \ /’■ C)imbing Mt* Wlimanjaro ;,yR6newe*Hope.Fot HIV/ >'• Aids Vaccines ;.^Pagi.5- £^fa!I.Bn0ak*in;NewiYork •• •, ;:J'^>^A}F98hloriStucJerrts. I. Meredittr^GrossrCcuntry At- Fest^v - ,» ^ Pag* 7p‘ ' ? ^ ^ 'Don t'P|r8oa My French WANGARI MAATHAI ‘GOES GREEN’ AT MEREDITH COLLEGE Amy Hruby Staff Writer •- On Thursday, October 1, Wangari Maathai, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, visited Meredith College to lecture on her experi ences in founding the Green Belt Movement. Maathai was educated at Mount St. Scholastica and atthe University of Pittsburgh before be coming tile first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctoral . degree: her Ph.D. in anatomy from the University of Nairobi. Since then, she has become a politi cal activist in Kenya, persistently struggling for democracy, and an environmental activist worldwide, creating a grassroots organization that alms to improve the environ ment and female quality of life in Africa by empovyering.groups pf‘ women to plant trees. Drawing heavily on her memoir, Unbowed. Maathai treated Meredith students and the Raleigh community to a lecture that included anecdotes froin her childhood In Kenya, reflections on the sexual discrimi nation she faced in the Kenyan university system, methods for starting the Green Belt Movement, and advice for Americans hoping to further tier environmental cause. Dr. Maathai delivered the 2009 Lillian Parker Wallace lecture in the Mclver Amphitheater, flanked by , tropical plants and uhderthe light of a waxing moon: a place she Photo courtesy media2.newsobserver.eom/smedia/2009/10S1/21 called "the best setting ever.” Be^- . fore beginnjng, President MaureeQ, Hartford presented Maathai with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa degree. After thanking President Hartford and Meredith College, Maathai began the lecture with a story of playing with fish eggs in her youth. Her uninformed fascination with the translucent beads, then with the miniscule, swimming tadpoles, and finally with the tiny, jumping frogs fostered her early love for biology, a subject she later went on to study. As an adult. Maathai discovered that the stream where she had watched this life cycle in her youth had been destroyed be cause of devel opment in the area, and she cited this mo ment of clarity as significant, showing her that she needed to dp Something to help save her. country's natu ral resources. ’ Maathai went on to .. discuss the timewhen she served on the National Coun cil.of Women. She said that she “learried of environmental Photo courtesy http://itiphonehome.fHes.wordpress.com/2009/09/wan- issueS from gan_maathal_credit_brigitte_lecombe_sm.jpg. rural women [on this council] with their tales of lack.of clean vyater and firewood.” Her thoughts on how to help them led her to create the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots orga nization originally developed to educate women on environmental issues. Maathai first asked the women "What are your prob- ' lems?" and then "Where did the problems come from?” Analyzing these answers led her to formu late what she called the “Wrong Bus Syndrome.” Maathai asserted that the rural Kenyans’ problems stemmed from riding the wrong bus. Kenya was being led by a cor rupt, nondemocratic government, and Maathai argued that “people must eventually take charge and change the direction the bus was traveling." The Kenyan population needed to demand a democratic government to change their lives. Maathai stated that even though a revolution occurred in 1991, the Kenyan people still needed to push the bus in the right direction and demand that their country become “a democratic space where all rights would be respected.” Maathai also argued that the global population was on the “wrong bus” as regards environ mental issues. People need to stop ignoring problems with environ ment and turn the bus around to save the planet. In attempts to turn the Meredith College bus around, . • to fulfill the campus theme "Cata lyst for Change,” and to honor Maathai’s work with the Green continued on pg 2 Green Tip for the Week of October 14 Many schools are blazing and exciting eco-friendly trail so choose a green college to support your greening efforts.