Yesterday, Freetown City Council (FCC), in collaboration with UN Women and Sierra Leone Women Engineers (SLWE) held an orientation session for the first cohort of the Women4Climate Mentorship Program mentees and mentors.

Women4Climate is an initiative adopted by C40 Cities that engages female Mayors across the globe who are committed to tackling issues of climate change. As a newly admitted innovator city in the C40 Cities Network, Freetown is excited about the program as it is directly linked to both of the targets in the Environmental Management Sector of the #TransformFreetown Agenda.

Through the Women4Climate initiative, Freetown and C40 aims to:
1. empower and inspire the next generation of climate leaders through a mentorship program dedicated to women

2. influence the conversation through leadership events and raise awareness through research on gender, cities and climate to highlight the key role women play in championing climate action.

The orientation introduced the ten mentors and ten mentees to the guidelines of the program and, most importantly, to each other. Closing the evening of activities and discussions, Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr highlighted the negative impact that climate change has had in Freetown; including recent flooding and the mudslide. She stressed on the need for women and young people in Freetown to get actively involved in tackling climate action.

The 10-month program partners women experts in environmental management, engineering, waste management and other fields related to mentees who have ideas/projects to reverse the effects of Climate Change. We, at FCC, thank UN Women and SLWE for their support. We look forward to supporting the ideas of our mentees as they come to life.