Nine-year-old Felix Finkbeiner stood in front of his fourth-grade class in Germany in January 2007. He wasn't initially trying to launch an international movement; rather, his assignment was to give a presentation about climate change. While researching, he came across the story of Wangari Maathai, whose Green Belt Movement had helped women in Kenya plant more than 30 million trees. Felix ended his presentation with a simple proposal: children in every country should plant one million trees. Just weeks later, on March 28, 2007, he and his classmates planted the first tree outside their school, which marked the beginning of Plant-for-the-Planet. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) , what began as a school project reached an extraordinary milestone only three years later, when the initiative planted its millionth tree in Germany.
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