A week ago today (Friday 25th April), Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr was at the University of Pennsylvania to receive the 2021 Lawrence C. Nussdorf Urban Leadership Prize. The award was presented to her during the Penn Institute for Urban Research’s 20th Annual Urban Leadership Forum.

The other two awardees were Patrick Harker, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogotá for two non-consecutive terms (1998-2001; 2016-2019), who transformed that city into an international model in several areas.

The award citation recognized FCC’s collective work in urban sustainability, including the construction of Freetown’s first wastewater treatment plant, digitizing and expanding the city’s property rate system, and planting and tracking 1.2 million trees through the #FreetownTheTreeTown initiative. 

She dedicated the award to all councilors and the teams working to implement the #TransformFreetown- #TransformingLives agenda.