The new project was launched to help rural women to meet their needs inexpensively and encourage Kenyans to re-dedicate themselves to the efforts of environmental conservation, particularly saving their country from threat of desertification.

Firstly, the tree-planting campaign was relaunched as ‘Save the Land Harambee’.

Using a slogan “Harambee”, this serves as a prompt to remove the internal barrier to the right behaviour as Wangari Maathai believed that this will boost the morale of the participants when doing communual work.

Harambee – Let us all pull together! (Kiswhali)

In addition, participants were requested to reaffirm their commitment at every tree planting ceremony. They will recite a committal, this can allow them to internalise the commitment and they will stick to their promise to put in effort in environmental conservation.

Spread of Save the Land Harambee

After the conference, a heightened national campaign was started to inform the public of the dangers of desertification and the necessary actions needed to be taken at the community level to fight the process through mass media and word-of-mouth. This resulted in the spread of the initiative which leads to increase in tree-planting interests across the community.

The Re-establishment of Green Belt Movement

There was an overwhelming large response for tree-planting from the women’s groups and a local tree-planting strategy was developed for public land. This involved in the planting of seedlings in row of at least thousands to form a “green belt” of trees. It provides shade, facilitate soil conservation, improving the aesthetics beauty of the landscape and providing habitats for small animals. The creation of numerous belt of trees on naked lands resulted in the formation of the Green Belt Movement in 1977.

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