Quote of the Day
“Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You are just talking.”
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai said these words in a 2006 speech at the Goldman Environmental Prize ceremony.
She was talking about trees.
But she could have been talking about almost anything we say we care about.
It is easy to condemn violence against women.
Harder to intervene when the woman being hurt is your sister, neighbour or friend and everyone says it is a “family matter.”
It is easy to complain about corruption.
Harder to refuse the small favour that suddenly makes corruption convenient for us.
It is easy to say children deserve better schools, communities deserve clean surroundings and people deserve to be treated with dignity.
Then comes the harder question:
What are we actually doing?
Not everybody can start an organization. Not everybody has money, influence or a large audience.
Maathai’s own work began with something remarkably ordinary: planting trees with women in Kenya.
A tree is small.
Until there are thousands of them.
The same is true of many things that change a community. Reporting one abuse. Helping one person obtain a document. Challenging one cruel joke. Asking one public official a question. Showing up for one neighbour.
Talking matters. It can expose a problem and persuade others to care.
But eventually, something has to leave our mouths and enter our hands.
Source: Wangari Maathai quotation and 2006 speech attribution
Did You Know?
A child can be born, have a name and a family—and still not officially exist in the records of their country.
That sounds strange until you think about what a birth certificate actually does.
It is not simply a piece of paper kept in a drawer.
Birth registration gives the state an official record that a child was born. The certificate provides proof of that registration and can help establish the child’s name, age, identity and nationality.
Yet UNICEF estimates that 150 million children under five worldwide remain unregistered. Another 55 million have reportedly been registered but do not have a birth certificate.
The gap is especially striking in sub-Saharan Africa. UNICEF’s latest regional analysis estimates that about 90 million children under five there remain unregistered.
Why does this matter?
Imagine trying to prove that a child is 14 rather than 18.
That difference can matter when authorities are dealing with child marriage, child labour, recruitment into armed groups or a child who comes into contact with the justice system. UNICEF also notes that birth certificates can be important for accessing education, health services and other protections.
And this is not an abstract problem for Cameroon.
In 2025, Cameroon’s birth-registration agency BUNEC, the Ministry of Decentralisation and Local Development and UNICEF were working with municipalities through the “My Name” challenge to improve birth registration. The effort included practical measures such as equipment and mobile registration support.
A child’s existence should never depend on whether an office is nearby, whether a parent understands the procedure or whether a family can afford the journey.
A birth certificate looks ordinary.
For the child whose future depends on proving who they are, it may be anything but.
Sources: UNICEF — The Right Start in Life: 2024 update · UNICEF — Birth registration in sub-Saharan Africa · UNICEF — The universal birth registration challenge in Cameroon
For discussion: If proof of identity can affect a child’s access to protection and opportunity, what should communities and governments do to make sure no child grows up without it?
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