the Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr OBE was in The Hague, Netherlands on Thursday, April 28, where she had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the Draper Richards Kaplan (DRK) Foundation international retreat.
DRK Foundation is a global venture philanthropy firm supporting early stage, high impact social enterprises. They believe that with early funding and rigorous support, exceptional leaders, tackling some of society’s most complex problems, can make the world a better place. Borrowed from our venture capital legacy, they find, fund and support exceptional leaders with innovative and highly impactful ideas that have the potential to scale.
DRK Foundation provides unrestricted capital, and, most importantly, provides rigorous, ongoing support by joining the board of directors and partnering with the leader to help build capacity in the organization and scale their impact.
In her keynote address, the Mayor of Freetown spoke about her journey from the private sector to public service, driven by her desire to protect the environment and to Transform Freetown. She also spoke about her commitment to making a difference in the lives of Freetonians.
“I emphasized the importance of teamwork and that so much more is achieved when an inclusive, collaborative and data driven approach is adopted and when technology is harnessed,” she said.
She spoke about resilience in the face of challenges which will inevitably be faced by anyone seeking to make meaningful changes. She encouraged entrepreneurs to believe in their visions and to keep pressing on.
Among the 40 social impact entrepreneurs who were at the Retreat, 20 operate in Africa and two (Last Mile Health and Seed Global Health) already operate in Sierra Leone. “With the latter, we had an opportunity to discuss expanding their current investments in the Freetown health sector and for those not yet operating in Sierra Leone I have begun conversations for bringing specific sanitation, education and technology enterprises to Freetown. One such engagement with Imagine Worldwide will strengthen our existing School Cluster Mentorship programme and compliment literacy and Mathematics learning in the 519 participating primary and JSS schools,” Mayor Aki-Sawyerr said. “At FCC we keep working to join the dots, scale solutions and make a difference in addressing the challenges faced by our city as we strive to #TransformFreetown.”
By Sallieu S. Kanu