By Alpha Abu
People from various backgrounds at Lacs resort on Friday 26th April witnessed the premiering of a documentary film on the resilience of women living in disaster prone coastal areas of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown.
The event was part of the Sierra Leone Environmental Film Summit and the film itself titled “Freetown’s Flood Fighters: Women’s Resilience on the Frontline’’ portrays the numerous challenges women volunteers in the mostly- impoverished slum settlements all over Freetown, have to face in getting communities to follow measures that help mitigate deforestation, erosion, flooding and other environmental hazards .
The mappings of communities at risk, strategies being used by the women to get compliance from a rather reluctant populace at the initial stages, were all vividly portrayed in the film. Community engagement was an effective strategy used by the women.
Though they face hurdles in their work, a remarkable aspect of their service is the resilience they continue to demonstrate and which has brought about attitudinal change in a good number of residents in those communities.
The Freetown City Council led by Mayor Yvonne Aki Sawyer has struck a partnership with various community groups including the Slum Dwellers Association to address those issues that one way or the other contribute to climate change.
At the end of the film’s screening, some of the women featured, held a panel discussion in which they shared their day to day experiences with members of the audience.
They narrated how they first encountered scepticism and reluctance from people in the disaster prone areas of Freetown but have gradually won their trust.
They mentioned how the massive cutting down of mangrove trees along the coastal areas brought about flooding in those areas that led to deaths, displacement and loss of personal belongings.
They however noted that their intervention has led to a halt in mangrove cutting for firewood especially used in the smoking of fish and bread baking.
The women said after thorough education of the people, the rewards are now being experienced, with reports of community people coming forward to say oysters used as a source of protein that were fast disappearing along the mangrove swamps are now returning and reproducing because they have stopped cutting down the trees.
Prior to the screening of the film, another documentary was shown titled ‘’Freetown to Treetown’’, showing a people -centred approach in the planting of trees around Freetown to address rising heat across the capital. The project, also supervised by the Freetown City Council, has in place electronic devices that are used to monitor and track the growth or status of the trees planted.
Freetown which is a congested and hilly narrow strip of Peninsula is experiencing an unprecedented level of land degradation due to the construction of unregulated structures mostly for dwelling.
Floodings and mudslides have led to deaths and huge property loss. Attempts to relocate affected people have largely been ineffective.
Over 1,000 people were killed following a mudslide in the mountainous rural district of the western area in 2017.
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