Once the focus is on doing what one can, the logic naturally expands to community: many “hummingbirds” acting together can alter what any single one could not. This is how movements grow—through accumulations of small, coordinated actions that make large systems respond.
Maathai’s own Green Belt Movement, founded in 1977, embodied this principle by mobilizing communities—especially women—to plant trees and restore degraded land. The work looked modest at the level of one seedling, but scaled through participation, it became a durable form of environmental and civic transformation. [...]
