Making a Difference in Morocco

From time to time, it's rewarding to see a person or organization recognized for their tireless work. Last week, NBC featured the Chicago-Casablanca sister city program in their 'Making a Difference' segment. The sister city hero mentioned in the story, Boubker Mazoz, is a former board member of Sister Cities International. Take a look.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#33026968

It's obvious that Boubker has contributed a great deal with youth locally, but he also remained committed to a global experience with his efforts to bring Moroccan students to our annual Youth Leadership Conference in the U.S. year after year. Bravo Boubker!

U.S. - Arab Cities Forum – Take Two

I am logging this entry enroute back from Amman, Jordan (circa 6/25) where the 2nd Annual U.S.-Arab Cities Forum has just successfully buttoned up its work. Launched last year by Mayor Daley of Chicago along with the mayors of two of his sister cities – Amman and Casablanca, the convening aspires to bring together chief elected officials and their key city leaders from these two parts of the world to share best practices, common issues, and network.

I was only able to make a small part of the event last year, so I was stunned by the territory of issues the program covered. To name a few, there were presentations or discussions on city planning, transportation, e-government, citizen participation, corruption, youth, arts, and (of course) economic development and tourism.

The three-day event brought together a broad range of heavy hitters from the Arab world including the mayors of Dubai, Kuwait City, Jeddah, Beruit, Arab Jerusalem, as well as the host city Amman, among others. Our partner from the region, the Arab Towns Organization, was also on hand. The U.S. presence was noticeably light given the economic times with only two mayors being able to make it besides Daley – the Mayor of Okalahoma City and the Mayor of Frisco, TX. The trio held their own just fine carrying the common messages, ideas, and concerns from U.S. cities.

Sister Cities International had the opportunity to network with Arab city leaders looking for U.S. partners and to present its model of private-public partnership with a number of examples of how our citizen program complements city initiatives such as economic development, sustainable development, energy projects, and youth engagement.

These kinds of events just reinforce the basic premise of our organization. Doesn’t matter how big or small the city, the age of the city, or type of local government issues and concerns – we are all the same. The scale of the issue may be different, but just as they knew in 1956 – across the globe, we have more in common than we have different.

A New Partner...the Arab Towns Organization

This evening, we signed the formal partnership with the Arab Towns Organization in the company of 50+ mayors, NGO leaders, officials from around the region, as well some Kuwait and French government officials.

Below you'll find my remarks that preceded the signing ceremony.

"Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you today. It is nice to see some familiar faces from when we last met in Chicago last spring. Sister Cities International is honored that the Arab Towns Organization chose the anniversary of its founding, today, as the moment to formally begin our partnership.

When I arrived at Sister Cities International just two years ago, our organization was seeking a partner to work with us in this part of the world. As we did our research, one organization kept coming to the fore – the Arab Towns Organization. The ATO’s goals to foster cooperation and communication among Arab leaders at the local level mirror the work of Sister Cities International. Much like the tree planting effort today, the ATO is to be commended for its Arab Urban Development Institute, its Environment Centre for Arab Towns, and other such efforts, which are examples of ATO’s 42-year commitment to improve the world we live in. On behalf of Sister Cities International, happy anniversary.

Sister Cities International is a global network of cities. Nearly 700 U.S. cities are partnered with 2,300 cities in 135 countries on 6 continents. We have existed for 53 years with a mission to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, & cooperation — one individual, one community at a time.

The sister city partnerships are long-term, city-to-city relationships, some of you know as twinning. The U.S. partnerships are run by the local citizens as volunteers. Our partnerships are successful if the citizens from the business community, education sector, and NGOs - a cross section of the community - work with the mayor and city officials.

A few years ago, Sister Cities International launched the Muslim World Partnership Initiative. This is an effort to increase the number of sister city partnerships in Muslim countries. Last week, we celebrated the 100th sister city partnership in a Muslim country with Houston, TX and Karachi, Pakistan. I was struck by the words of the Karachi mayor who responded to a question from the U.S. media about what really happens between sister cities. He said, “The time for gift giving ends today.” He was looking to Houston for some very specific results: business/trade opportunities, infrastructure investment, and tourism. These are two-way partnerships – both cities and its citizens learn and benefit.

Sister city programs promote the traditional cultural, youth and education exchanges. But more common in our ever-changing world, we see city technical assistance, economic and sustainable development endeavors, and international development projects. In some cases, we see U.S. cities working trilaterally or multilaterally on projects.

I could give you examples from Amman and Abu Dhabi, Baghdad and Beirut, Cairo and Casablanca - all of which have U.S. sister cities. Earlier today, I spoke to the mayor of Dubai who will be signing an agreement with Phoenix, Arizona next month – but there are more opportunities for partnerships.

Allow me to be clear about one message: there is great interest by U.S. citizens and mayors to work with Arab cities.

We are living in a world with unprecedented challenges. The complexity and interconnected nature of these problems will not be solved by one single country. We need each other for our cities to grow, for our education and health systems to improve, and for our technology and business sectors to flourish. In short, we need partnerships among people to be successful.

While our national governments work closely together on some issues, on other policies they will disagree. But the real work can continue happen at the local, municipal level despite any diplomatic differences. I call it, Community Diplomacy. This is where Sister Cities International and the Arab Towns Organization can and will have the most impact. Our organizations will bring people and communities together for common purposes and projects, bridging borders, languages, and oceans.

We are honored to become a partner of the Arab Towns Organization. Time for gift giving is over. I look forward to the real work ahead with each of you to help us make this partnership successful. Thank you.

Sister Cities Goes Green in Kuwait

Reporting from Kuwait City, Kuwait, I am here representing Sister Cities International as part of the founding day anniversary events of the Arab Towns Organization (ATO). Later today, Sister Cities International will formally sign its partnership agreement with the ATO.

Today's events include about 50 people from around the Arab world as well as representatives from the UN and Cites Unies (SCI's counterpart in France). The participants include representatives from the Kuwait government and a wide range of mayors from the ATO's member countries.


After a tour of a refurbished market and community center, we stopped by a local park. The ATO has a deep commitment to environment projects and as part of the day's events (despite a moderate sandysky day) each city and organization in attendance planted a tree in the Peace & Friendship Park. I was pleased to lead the SCI delegation (myself and Noha Georges, our SCI Muslim World Partnership Initiative consultant) to our spot in the park. In addition to my shoveling handiwork, you'll see we were assisted by the local Boy Scout troop. More posts to come from Kuwait.

(Videography courtesy of Noha Georges.)

Landmark Met: 100th Muslim Partnership

On Tuesday, Sister Cities International celebrated its 100th partnership in a Muslim-majority country with the city signing of Houston, Texas with Karachi, Pakistan. Take a listen to NPR’s coverage.

Houston Mayor Bill White and Mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal of Karachi signed the official Memo of Understanding at City Hall. As the largest city in Pakistan, Karachi hopes to focus city-to-city exchanges on business and trade opportunities between the cities, joint learning about how the cities manage terrorism threats, promoting tourism, and sharing cultural understanding programs. Houston, the fourth largest city in the U.S., has more than 80,000 people of Pakistani origin living in Houston and expects a great deal of support for the new relationship.

After 9/11 Sister Cities International's leadership created the Muslim World Partnership Initiative, a program area dedicated to advance long-term partnerships throughout the Muslim World and raise public awareness at the municipal level in the United States.

Karachi represents Houston’s 17th sister city partnership. With the addition of Karachi, Houston’s local program is now distinguished within the sister city network as the U.S. city with the most partnerships in the Muslim World - Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Baku (Azerbaijan), Istanbul (Turkey), and Karachi (Pakistan).

There is a driving interest among U.S. cities to establish partnerships in the Muslim world. There's a gap to bridge and our network sees its role to play, just as we have in the past. There were sister cities in the Soviet Union long before the fall of the Wall (now, we have 80 partnerships in Russia and many more in Eurasia and other former Soviet states). We were in Iraq when Saddam was in power (now, we have 9 partnerships and growing thanks to the PRTs), we have a presence in Cuba, Iran, and so on.

The point being, sister city programs don't shy away from zones of conflict, places where democracy doesn't flourish, and regions where people tend to disagree with America more than they agree. I'm regularly impressed by the "average" citizens in our network who roll up their sleeves and directly engage people from around the world with no political motivation except to work collaboratively on a project, to better understand each other, and ultimately to advance world peace.

So, bravo to Houston for helping us reach 100, but I'm eager for 101 and beyond. Our work continues.

(Photo Credit: NPR's website)

Re-engaging the World One Interview at a Time

I hope you've seen today's coverage of President Obama's first extensive interview - with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya Network. What a statement. Read some of the coverage of what I'm calling the "we are not your enemy" interview. It will be interesting over the next few days/weeks to see how this plays across the globe.

Odds & Ends
Those interested in the conversations from the Smith-Mundt Symposium I attended. The host of the event now has most of the transcripts online. You'll be most interested in the Doran and Glassman keynotes. The other panels included some good dialogue as well.

I'm looking for images/pictures (still and video) of citizen diplomacy activity in your community for an upcoming publication. Do you have some images to share? Email them to me!

Also, alas, the defense industry event in February which SCI was slated to present, has been changed. They published our white paper but we won't have the opportunity to speak. So the ball bounces sometimes.