Game Changer: $7.5M Grant to Sister Cities International

A few weeks ago we announced what I think is a game changer for Sister Cities International – a $7.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We will launch a major three-year program working in urban African communities. The Sister Cities network will provide city-to-city technical assistance focusing on water, sanitation, and health.

This Gates grant represents the largest grant in the history of Sister Cities International.

Here’s my cut on why this is our game changer: For over five decades our members have made a name for the organization in the cultural understanding business. Starting with countries then known as our “former enemies” (Japan, Germany, etc), U.S. citizens worked to share their community and American culture in far away cities and in turn opened their minds and homes to visitors from abroad to learn about other cultures and traditions. Now, we are in 135 countries on six continents. People-to-people exchanges – it worked then, it works now, and it will continue to work. But over time the citizens realized there was more about the community that they could share beyond a visiting choir or a student group. What about trade and commerce? What about humanitarian assistance? What about our technical expertise? So…quietly for years, U.S. cities have been going well beyond cultural understanding – wells in Timbuktu, a medical clinic in the Congo, solar panels for rural farmers in Tibet. What is more fundamentally important than water, health, and food?

Enter our new program, funded by the Gates Foundation, where we will draw on this experience and scale up our work in Africa and on these types of international development projects in a way that’s only possible with exceptional funding. You thought we did a pretty good job on the cultural understanding stuff – wait until you see what’s next.

Ideas and Action from Peru & Latin America

I was pleased to speak last week at a conference hosted by Ideas Peru in Lima, Peru. The conference looked at how to move forward with international development projects in Latin America. Participants came from across Latin America as well as Spain and Italy and were represented by mayors, local elected officials, city government officials, heads of NGOs, educators, multilateral funding organizations, and passionate citizens.

Ideas Peru is a new organization that is looking to take pent-up energy of the citizens and move it to action. The presenters offered different models on how to engage local government and hometown communities and how to achieve more accountability of government.

The sister cities model fits into this dialogue quite well. They indicated that national governments haven’t always been the best leader or most efficient engine to make progress on community projects, such as water or infrastructure. But as I explored this more it was also clear that others felt local governments didn’t have the expertise to execute projects so money was wasted and progress languished. In both the panel discussion and my plenary speech, I was able to offer tangible examples of how various constituencies within a community work in a private-public partnership. I found the attendees welcomed the ideas and model (even if I based this solely on the # of business cards I got during the conference expressing an interest in starting a sister city program) but moreover, they were ready for action.

It’ll be interesting to see what shakes out from this event, but I sensed a serious intent of the attendees to roll up their sleeves and get moving.

It's as Basic as Water

When many people think of Sister Cities International, they think cultural exchanges. A choir tour from South Africa or a young person visiting Germany for a few weeks in the summer as their first experience abroad. For 50+ years, we've done a tremendous job reaching our hands out across oceans and borders, navigating language differences to being a dialogue using culture as a means toward common ground. These are very valuable, and often life changing, experiences for the individuals or the delegation on the trip. But more and more local sister city programs are being asked to do more for their sister cities abroad and their communities at home. These activities take the shape of "international development," which is a pretty broad moniker for economic development, sustainable development, work on the MDGs, and so forth. I have to share a terrific example on this front that demonstrates how some sister city programs go well beyond culture to deliver on our mission.

For years local sister city programs have been working on water issues with their sister city partners abroad. Last year, P&G provided Sister Cities International a grant to launch a Safe Drinking Water Initiative in Ethiopia and Nigeria. In short, the program taps six sister cities (3 U.S. with 3 African) to provide temporary clean drinking water and public education programs on the importance and impact of safe drinking water. The immediate clean water is made possible using a product created by P&G, PUR-Purifier of Water. Folks in the U.S. will think of the water purifier instrument you might attach to a faucet, but a related P&G product is a packet when dropped in a turbid water, will clean in 5 minutes. I've seen it, I've taken a drink afterward, and the results are visually stunning and more importantly it instantly creates healthy water.

The image above is not uncommon in Africa. You see citizens coming to the edge of a reservoir to draw water for use at home. This water source is also a community gathering place for children who swim and play in the water and animals. Not only is the water source contaminated, but the jugs and containers which the water is transferred to the home are also contaminated.

The Safe Drinking Water Initiative uses with sister city programs (3 pilot programs in Atlanta, Denver & Kansas City this year) that are already working on a long-term water solutions with their sister city partner. In the case of Denver Sister Cities, in 2002 they developed a comprehensive water plan with their sister city, Axum, Ehtiopia. This was done gratis by Denver Water, the professional organization that manages the Denver water systems and resources. In the interim years the local sister city program has been working on the implementation as funding and people-power were available. A number of professionals and engineers are involved from a range of organizations in the community. When the P&G grant became available, Denver quickly jumped on board as they saw this as a good interim step for Axum to provide clean water immediately and a chance to raise the dialogue in Axum about safe drinking water from a society/cultural stand-point to a health issue.

The sister city programs use many channels to make this successful: the mayor's office, the water/sanitation department, hospitals, health clinics, schools, and community centers. One goal is to find way to instruct children and women on the value of clean water. This strategy will bring about change since children and women are traditionally responsible for collecting and carrying the water to the home.

While we've only reported our first set of progress on the program, it's rewarding to see individuals and communities involved in the issue for years reinvigorated by a program. The best outcome can be seen to the left, as children anxiously await a taste of clean water and what it represents to their future.

Photo Credits: The images accompanying this post are from the Denver Sister Cities program, which is working with its partner, Axum (Ethiopia) to create a long-term water solution for the reservoir. For more details on the Sister Cities International program, visit www.sister-cities.org and click Sustainable Development, under Programs & Services.

Good Will to All

In my almost two-year tenure at Sister Cities International, I've experienced amazing good will. The good will came from our volunteer members across the US and globally, good will from our board and leadership groups, and good will from peer institutions. It's been...inspiring. In the same period, I've seen abject poverty and extravagant riches. All of this demonstrates the dramatic reach of the sister cities movement.

I've witnessed people opening their home to strangers, we've sent delegations to deliver art supplies to children with HIV/AIDS, devised a program to provided the most simple and vital of needs: clean water, and talked candidly with high school students about their life and future in their war-torn country. Each interaction has been revealing, personal, and reflective. This is the power of citizen exchanges.

I invite readers to provide their experiences from the past year. Share the power and impact of your citizen and community diplomacy.