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)

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.

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.

Inspired Future

A couple of hours before a new U.S. President takes the office, I am watching another chapter in the American story unfold on TV like millions more in the U.S. and abroad. This moment reminds me of one my first vivid sister cities experiences with 20 Iraqi high school students. Just hours after they arrived in the U.S., I participated in a discussion about their perceptions of the U.S. It was a time of great unrest and violence in Iraq. After creating a long list of words describing their perceptions, two words were noticeably absent: hope and opportunity.

No matter one’s political persuasion, without a word or speech spoken yet I hope those students are watching today – hope and opportunity are now powerful images of the National Mall.