Unbowed

This chapter describes the beginnings of the Green Belt Movement and its gradual expansion from a small volunteer organization to a profitable, national one. Maathai makes two important contacts through a 1981 United Nations conference held in Nairobi. First, she finds a source of funding through the United Nations Development Fund for Women. Second, she secures a paid position as a project coordinator through the intervention of William Elsrud, director of the Norwegian Forest Society. 

As the Green Belt Movement expands, Maathai refines her methods. She establishes a new incentive for her workers, not paying them their full salary until she determines that the trees they have planted are thriving. Since many of her rural female workers are unable to read or write, she hires young men to document the number of planted seedlings and surviving trees; these same young men perform outreach in remote communities. 

Maathai expands the Movement by holding workshops on social justice topics: “We also looked at issues of democracy, human rights, gender, and power” (174). The Movement begins to attract international attention, drawing, among other supporters, the American writer Terry Tempest Williams, who attempts to start an American chapter of the movement.