As Kenyan environmentalist and deputy minister for environment Wangari Maathai was announced this year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, members of her Green Belt Movement were bursting with joy. "We feel so excited. Extremely excited!", said Muguru Muchai, a project officer at the Green Belt Movement in Nairobi. "Everybody was sitting by the radio, and now we are receiving calls from all the corners of the world", she told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa. Maathai was visiting her constituency in Nyeri, close to Mount Kenya, when the award was announced. In Nairobi, Muchai said the prize awarded to their founder would boost the work of the movement, and she said "now we will be able to work even harder". Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, and its work to protect the environment has been a model for several other African countries.
