26 July 2006
Citizen Links Helping Communities Achieve Development Goals
1,200 attend Sister Cities' 50th anniversary meeting in Washington
Washington -- Ongoing international city-to-city links that stimulate information exchanges are an underused resource for helping developing countries climb out of poverty, according to representatives attending the largest-ever gathering of the nonprofit organization, Sister Cities International (SCI).
Approximately 1,200 SCI conference delegates -- officials and citizens from cities and towns of all sizes from more than 130 countries -- met in Washington in July to discuss how city-to-city cooperation can be better recognized by national and international development bodies as an important and cost-effective tool in helping achieve global poverty reduction goals and promote good governance, the organization says.
The meeting celebrated Sister Cities' 50th year and focused on how partnerships between cities can help achieve sustainable development in poor countries. In all, the Sister Cities network represents more than 2,500 communities around the world, according to the group.
One sister-city partnership -- between Amesbury, Massachusetts, and Esabulu, Kenya -- won the SCI 2006 "innovative award for sustainable development." In 2005 Amesbury helped its Kenyan sister city open a health center, water supply service, primary school and youth theater.
"We've been working on … the projects for a long time," said Mark Bean, secretary for the partnership, Amesbury for Africa. Paying their own travel costs, more than 100 Amesbury citizens have traveled to Esabulu since 1987 to help the community with economic and social development and to learn about problems facing the developing world.
Another example is Tempe, Arizona, which partners with cities in Macedonia, China, Germany, New Zealand, France and Ireland to sponsor summer secondary school studentand teacher exchanges. Tempe also sponsors a program for young professionals to visit its sister cities to learn "how their job is done in a different country," according to the Tempe SCI project.
On September 11, 1956 -- the first day of a post-World War II people-to-people conference in Washington –- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower laid out the vision for a sister-city movement through which individuals could advance world peace by engaging in people-to-people diplomacy. (See related article.)
That vision is now a flourishing global network encouraging strategic partnerships between two or more communities to exchange knowledge and ideas and share technical assistance related to sustainable development and other areas.
Headquartered in Washington, Sister Cities International certifies and supports partnerships between U.S. cities, counties, states, and counterpart jurisdictions in other countries, according to the organization.
CITIZEN DIPLOMACY
Local civic leaders may be some of the best "ambassadors" by making cross-border commercial connections stimulate community-level economic development around the world, Senator Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told meeting participants.
"Governments can't replace the bonds created between peoples," he said.
Citizen diplomacy through "people-to-people and community-to-community exchange is one of the most important tools of public diplomacy," said Dina Habib Powell, the State Department’s assistant secretary for educational and cultural affairs (ECA) and deputy under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs. However, Powell told conference delegates, the "life-changing partnerships ... that draw citizens into public life and complement official diplomacy" are "often overlooked and underappreciated."
ECA administers the Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES), which since 2003 has brought hundreds of high school students from predominantly Muslim countries to the United States to study.
Other SCI projects include:
• Leadership conferences for YES students;
• The Iraqi International Partners for Peace program, which helps five select U.S. cities deliver technical and humanitarian assistance to cities in Iraq;
• Grants to six U.S. cities to conduct peer education, awareness building and economic development to support people affected by HIV/AIDS in Ghana and Kenya;
• The Wheelchairs for Peace program, through which the mobility devices are distributed worldwide to individuals who need them; and
• With the Academy for Educational Development (AED), the Open World Leadership Program, which brings emerging leaders from parts of the former Soviet Union to interact with citizens in communities in the United States.
Additional information about Sister Cities International is available on the organization's Web site.
More information on State Department supported exchange programs and full text of Powell’s prepared remarks to the conference are available on the State Department Web site.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
