Wangari Maathai Quotes

In 2009, designer Tina Tangalakis went on a volunteer trip to Ghana and instantly fell in love with the country and its people. It was from that trip that Della was born, a company that provides jobs, education, and skills training to women in Ghana.

Grameen Bank was formed as an institution owned by its borrower members, who are poor women. Through its unique decision-making process, Grameen Bank has given millions of women the means to emerge from the shadows in a male-dominated society and to make something of themselves.

Svatantra's journey began with a vision to make women in rural areas self-sustainable.

To empower the women in rural areas, we have started something called Mission Shakti.

I don't have any plans to make money for myself. All I wish to do is empower rural women in our country.

During the launch of the 'Ama Gaon, Ama Bikash' scheme, I directly spoke to women representatives from the interior villages of Sambalpur and Narayanpatna. From the way the women explained the issues pertaining to their villages and their collective needs, I understood that women empowerment has reached even the grassroots of the democratic setup.

One of the reasons why we started the Green Belt Movement is to work with these ordinary peasant farmers so as to educate them that, despite the fact that they are poor, it is in their interest to protect the soil that they have, to protect the forest they have, to protect the land that they have, because if they don't do it, things can be only worse tomorrow for them for them and for their children.

The majority of small-holder farmers in Africa are women and, in urban areas, you're primarily looking at women-led households. So we can't solve hunger if we don't have gender-sensitive programming that addresses access to opportunities for women, whether it's through education or tools for cooking, like solar-powered stoves.

In India, we now see many highly qualified professionals ready to work in the rural hinterland and in their own towns and cities to tackle development issues directly without depending much on the government.

You need to support human development and human capital as much as possible. And we've had 25 years of programs, great programs. We supported 125,000 surgeries. We fund 15,000 scholarships every year for college and higher education. We gave bicycles for rural areas. We gave laptops.

I did stuff for three years in Kabul that I found exciting, and a lot of that was fixing roofs, talking about sewage installation.

If we tackle deforestation in the right way, the benefits will be far-reaching - greater food security, improved livelihoods for millions of small farmers and indigenous people, more prosperous rural economies, and above all, a more stable climate.

My program intends to outsource tree plantation to uneducated rural men and women with a monthly salary of Rs5,000 for barely an hour's work.

And in rural communities we've worked alongside, Haitians are doing far more than merely recovering from the earthquake. Many are creating long-term sustainable change.

The government should promote community nurseries of mangrove species and other appropriate tree species chosen under the coastal bio-shield and agro-forestry programmes.

When you empower women and help them thrive, you help their communities thrive. Women shoulder the burden disproportionately.

I found out that there was this project called the 'Great Green Wall' where they wanted to plant trees across the Sahara desert, and the idea was born that I wanted to create a support structure for that initiative.

I wish every international or national corporate would be given a rule to set up companies in rural areas, where they would have to provide hospitals, schools, low-cost housing and free medical care, training, and then employment - but not on agricultural land.

Growing up Marley, we wanted anything we put our hands on to be beneficial to the environment and the community.

India and other developing nations need non-farm sector activity. So what we are doing, we are giving small microbusiness to the rural women, especially the farmers' wives.

I have been a policymaker proven in tackling some very complex social issues on the municipal level here in Boston.

I like to contribute as much as possible to some of the NGOs that I know and in the areas that I like to contribute to. These include primary health, primary education, children's issues and AIDS.

After I returned from Oxford, I spent 5-6 years in a village in Madhya Pradesh - 25 km. outside Bhopal - along with a group of people working with the communities. But, over time, we realised that there were just too many constraints, and for ordinary citizens to be the change agent was not that easy.

I became intrigued with the whole development sector, going into a community, building it up, coming up with a plan from an architectural standpoint, and bringing it to fruition, especially if you're able to make the community a better place in the process.

I feel we could be doing more to connect the increasing revenues in football to some kind of deeper purpose. This is what struck me about Common Goal. Through the one percent pledge, we are building a bridge between football and social impact around the world.