ALL ABOUT FELIX FINKBEINER

Felix Finkbeiner made a speech at the United Nations in New York when he was just 13 years old. The German boy spoke in English and his message was very clear – save the world’s forests. Felix became an environmental superstar at a very young age because he started a very successful campaign in his country.

In 2007 Felix did a project on climate change in his primary school in Sternberg, near Munich in Germany. He saw some information online about Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan biologist. She started a tree planting campaign in rural Kenya called ‘‘the Green Belt Movement” and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. Felix thought that her campaign was interesting and he decided to talk about what Maathai did in her country in class. At the end of Felix's presentation, he shared the idea that the children of the world could plant one million trees in every country on Earth.

His presentation was a success. His teacher then asked him to give the same presentation to the other classes in his school. Two months later Felix thought that he could do better than just presenting about that campaign and planted his first tree. Then he started his own campaign to plant a million trees. He called that campaign Plant for the Planet.

Students at other schools joined the campaign too. They planted more than 150 000 trees in Germany in just a year. They also made a website for the campaign and soon other countries began to take part too. They wanted to meet this young boy who started this campaign, so Felix started giving presentations also outside his own country. In November 2008, he spoke at the European Parliament.

At the beginning of 2011, the International Year of Forests, Felix made his speech at the United Nations. He asked world leaders to “stop talking – start planting”. In the same year the campaign reached its goal of planting one million trees in Germany. He also travelled to Kenya and met Wangari Maathai. And this all began with a school project.