Outlining her journey from growing up in Kenya to winning the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai spoke of trees and the need for peace.

“We need to rethink our concept of peace and security. We need to look at the way we manage and share our resources,” Maathai said. “Only then do we have hope for peace.”

Maathai spoke to about 200 people, including Evanston Mayor Lorraine H. Morton, at the Sheil Catholic Center. She is visiting Chicago as the keynote speaker at the annual Rotary International Convention. Her visit to Sheil was sponsored by the Catholic center and the North Suburban Peace Initiative.

Maathai’s work with her foundation, the Green Belt Movement, and as a member of the Kenyan Parliament led to her selection by the Nobel Committee. The Green Belt Movement has planted more than 30 million trees since it was founded in 1977 and champions environmental conservation.

The idea for the foundation came after the introduction of cash crops such as tea and coffee began to change the landscape and the traditions of her native Kenya, Maathai said.

The introduction of cash crops robbed the women of Kenya of many of their traditional roles, Maathai said. They were no longer able to gather firewood because the trees had been cut down, and they could not plant food crops to eat or sell because the men owned the land. The women, she said, felt they had become dependent.

“The problems were connected to the land,” Maathai said. “Perhaps you can meet some of these problems by planting trees.”

She organized women into groups to plant seeds, disregarding the technical advice of foresters, who Maathai said disempowered the women.

“When I said, ‘Let’s use our common sense,'” to plant the trees, she said, “the women felt liberated.”

Maathai said she became involved in national politics and issues of governance when she saw how closely the environment and the government were linked.

“I found myself not just wanting to provide trees and firewood,” Maathai said. “I found myself fighting for justice.”

Maathai first came to the United States in 1960 to study at Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas. She later became the first woman from East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree and the first African woman to be a recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize.

She was elected to the Kenyan parliament in 2002 with 98 percent of the vote. Maathai is currently the Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the parliament.

“I became a political activist and joined political activists to work for democracy,” Maathai said. “The law is made by human beings and the law can be changed by human beings.”

Maathai’s Catholic roots were also evident when she talked about rereading the Bible and finding the importance of nature in it.

“(God) first created the whole world and then created us last,” she said. “If he created us before, we would die. What was created before us does not need us, but we need them.”

Father Ken Simpson of Sheil said the center would plant a tree in front of the building in honor of Maathai’s visit.

Geffrey Tambo, a Truman College and DePaul University student from Kenya, heard about the speech from a Kenyan friend in the area.

“We have a lot of issues related (to Maathai’s work) and it’s up to us to sensitize to how important and urgent these problems are,” Tambo said.

Universities such as Northwestern should encourage students to pursue environmental conservation on an individual level, Tambo said.

“I keep asking what I can do,” he said. “If not me, who? If not now, when?”

Reach Elizabeth Kirk at [email protected].