YARDOSL leads the Freetown, the Tree-town Campaign

Freetown the Tree-town campaign is an initiative of the Freetown City Council with funds from World Bank. The project complements the Mayor’s Transform Freetown agenda with a focus on planting and growing 1,000,000 trees in Freetown between 2020-2022.

The project is expected to contribute to nature-based solutions to climate, improving degraded lands, restoring biodiversity loss in upper catchment areas, and creating livelihoods for people, especially women.
YARDOSL takes lead as an implementing partner in the project with the responsibility to train tree growers, engage communities, raise awareness, and plant 65% of the total trees in Selected communities around Freetown. So far, the planting has been done in the upper communities around Kissy, Wellington, Allentown, Grafton, Yams Farm, and Rokel.

Speaking on the relevance of the project, our Executive Director states that, the project has not only restored degraded lands but it has given us the opportunity to educate people about the dangers of deforestation.

Because of the hilly landscape of Freetown, it is very important to reduce deforestation to avoid rampant erosion and mudslides that have recently killed over a thousand people. He furthered that, the project has also had socio-economic importance as it has provided employment for 63 young people employed by YARDOSL, it has provided training on environmental stewardship for 30 community leaders, and when the economic trees start to produce, it will create income for the beneficiaries.