Last week FCC had the pleasure of welcoming a delegation from Yale School of the Environment to Freetown. Professor Karen Seto and Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning of the Hixon Centre for Urban Sustainability at Yale, were accompanied by 7 graduate students who are enrolled on the “FreetownTheTreeTown” capstone course that is incorporated into their Master’s program.

FCC is truly honored that the “FreetownTheTreeTown” course was designed by Professor Seto and Director Murphy-Dunning and incorporated into this year’s Master’s program as a result of a lecture that I delivered at the Hixon Centre at Yale University in August 2023.

The course is focused on: developing data-driven, scalable planting methods to create cooling corridors across Freetown; learning from global city strategies to strengthen Freetown’s tree-planting efforts; and crafting a youth engagement strategy to inspire and involve young people in building a greener, cooler Freetown.

The 6 day visit to Freetown enabled the students to gain firsthand insight into the #FreetownTheTreeTown initiative and to share with our team the findings and analysis from the research that they had conducted prior to the visit.

Their time in Freetown was hectic with visits to the Kolleh Town mangrove planting site and to a tree nursery in Songo. In addition to extensive engagements with youth employed as growers and trackers on the #FreetownTheTreeTown initiative, the delegation also met with representatives from the World Bank and the Ministry of the Environment, with Youth Climate Activists and with Yale World Fellow Naasu Fofanah. FCC looks forward to deepening collaboration with Yale University and to identifying more opportunities for support to our #TransformFreetown #TransformingLives agenda.