Entering the Political Arena (1989-1994):
By the mid 1980s this idea had expanded into the pan African Greenbelt movement, engaging women on the movements core mission all over central and Eastern Africa.
After the success of The Green Belt Movements early efforts in 1988 the movement expanded to included explicitly political goals and efforts. After noticing corruption and capitalism were becoming the main obstacles to their efforts, the Greenbelt movement began to foster centers for political organizing and activism.
The goals of this new focus on political engagement had specific goals:
- Preserve traditional cultures. Give women the space and support to preserve their original identities
- Protest capitalism in Kenya, especially efforts that lead to environmental destruction
- Locally organize to protect elections, and fight corruption from the community level
- “Practice day to day liberation”, lifted from western feminist rhetoric. Empowering both yourself and local women in all of your actions
In the mid-1990s this also meant fighting capitalism by training women in local agricultural easy to maintain trades. Such as beekeepings, sustenances farming and nursery running this would allow women to fight environmental destruction even more by supporting their own efforts in food production and agriculture