Highlights 2024
Highlights 2023
Six e-cars for outpatient health services handed over in La Paz
The City of Bonn supports its partner city of La Paz with the purchase of e-cars for outpatient health care services. After the symbolic handover of the first car in February, all six e-cars have now been handed over in La Paz. The small environmentally friendly cars had been tested beforehand to ensure that they could be used in the small steep streets and alleys in the city and surrounding areas.
Nawruz Festival: Delegation from Bukhara visits Bonn
A project partnership has been in place between Bonn and the Uzbek city of Bukhara for 20 years. Joint projects have successfully been implemented and close cooperation has been maintained throughout the years. As a sign of their solidarity, the cities again celebrated the Uzbek Nawruz spring festival in the Old Town Hall on Wednesday, March 15, 2023.
For this purpose, a delegation from Bukhara traveled to Bonn from Monday to Thursday, March 13 to 16.
The Nawruz festival (Kurdish 'newroz' literally means 'the new day') is a New Year and spring festival celebrated in Uzbekistan on March 21. It represents the end of winter and the beginning of spring. The celebration had first been held in the Old City Hall of Bonn in 2002. Corona-related, the format changed to an online gathering for the past three years.
At this year's celebration, which the city held jointly with the Uzbek Consul General and the German-Uzbek Society in the Old Town Hall, about 100 guests were present. Amongst them were the press secretary, Hokimijat of the City of Bukhara, Olim Jo'raev, the Head of the Department of Culture of the City of Bukhara, Abror Ortiqov, as well as the Chairwoman of the Bukhara City Partnerships Association, Khushvakht Akramova. In addition to traditional Uzbek music with dance, the national dish "Plov" (an originally oriental rice dish) was served, which a cook from the Uzbek Consulate General prepared in the traditional way on site.
The basis of the project partnership between Bonn and Bukhara was the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding for the establishment of friendly relations in 2003. There have been regular delegation visits on both sides, which focus on the topics of environment and sustainability, economy and tourism as well as education and culture. The German-Uzbek Partnership Association has also been accompanying and supporting the partnership for many years.
Bonn supports partner city of La Paz with the purchase of e-cars for outpatient health care services
The city of Bonn supports its partner city of La Paz in the expansion of decentralized health care. The core of the project is the purchase of e-cars for the city's newly established outpatient health service. On February 3, 2023, the e-cars were symbolically handed over to the mayor of La Paz, Iván Arias.
During a public ceremony, the first of the Bolivian-built vehicles was put into operation. The greetings of Mayor Katja Dörner were read out at the ceremony by the German Ambassador on site, José Schulz.
For both mayors, the start of their respective terms at the end of 2020 and in mid-2021 was strongly influenced by the pandemic response. Iván Arias had already mentioned the pandemic as well as the climate crisis as important topics on the municipal agenda in an initial conversation with the Mayor of Bonn. Katja Dörner was therefore particularly pleased that the common concern to achieve climate neutrality now also plays an essential role in the current project to strengthen the health sector. She highly welcomes that emission-neutral mobility will now be used in this context in the future: "Bonn and La Paz stand together to work for the climate and the well-being of the people in our cities."
This project was implemented with funding from the Municipal Corona Solidarity Package of the Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW) of Engagement Global. The funding program enables German municipalities to support their partner cities in strengthening their infrastructure after the pandemic. The project is embedded in the implementation of the concept "Medico en tu casa" (Doctor in your house), which was introduced in La Paz to establish and professionalize outpatient decentralized health care.
The health care program was developed by the Health Secretariat of the City of La Paz. It includes a series of measures to strengthen decentralized health care. In particular, elderly, chronically ill and mobility-impaired people who cannot leave their homes receive access to curative health services as well as rehabilitation and preventive measures.
In the future, the new small Quantum E-cars made in Bolivia can be requested via a special emergency call system. They will help provide medical care at home, especially for elderly and mobility-impaired residents of La Paz.
A first step in the implementation of the program was the establishment of the central emergency call center "Auxilio La Paz 167," which was inaugurated by Mayor Arias in early August 2022. Mobile health teams linked to the municipal hospitals can be called through the emergency call center. Until now, there was still a lack of vehicles to adequately carry out the deployment of mobile teams for outpatient care.
Project partnership with La Paz:
The project partnership was approved by the Council of the City of Bonn in 2002. It places a strong focus on municipal approaches to environmental and climate issues. To this end, the two cities entered into a climate partnership in 2012. This is the first time that the partner cities are also working together in the health sector.
Highlights 2022
SDG partnership conference brought together guests from partner cities
Bonn's SDG Partnership Conference has kicked off at the Old Town Hall at September 26, 2022. For the first time, the three-day conference brought together representatives from the European partner cities of the districts as well as from non-European partner cities.
The aim of the conference, entitled "Building Bridges between Cities in Europe and Worldwide - Joining Hands for Localising the SDGs", was to exchange technical information, jointly discuss project ideas for the local implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and initiate further networking between the partner cities. The focus has been on personal exchange between the partner cities and the City of Bonn, which has been severely limited over the past two and a half years due to the pandemic. The conference was intended to give new impetus to cooperation and twinning arrangements.
Representatives from Bonn's project partner cities Bukhara (Uzbekistan), Cape Coast (Ghana) and La Paz (Bolivia) as well as from Bonn's twin cities of Oxford (Great Britain) and Opole (Poland) have been present. In addition, the city of Ramallah (Palestine), with which Bonn has been cooperating for several years, was also taking part. The various twinning associations were also participating in the conference.
Chengdu: Beethoven Seminar at Chengdu University
Project partnership between Bonn and Chengdu is continued online
From June 20-July 01, 2022, Chengdu University offered an online seminar on Bonn composer Ludwig van Beethoven to interested students. The course, entitled "Bonn and Chengdu: Beethoven as trademark" was held as part of the Summer School at Chengdu University and examined the question of Beethoven's role as a cultural "mediator figure" between Germany and China. Dr. Hannes Jedeck, a musicologist and sinologist himself, led the seminar from the German side.
Since the topic "Beethoven" apparently aroused more interest than expected, the seminar, initially limited to 15 participants, was eventually opened to 80 students from Chengdu University. The demand was simply too great. The Chinese coordinator of the program, Lianlian Gao, explained it as follows: "For us, Beethoven is an international icon. In China, almost every student knows his famous '9th Symphony' or the piano piece 'Für Elise'."
Numerous Bonn institutions and facilities supported the online seminar with their own contributions.
Cape Coast: Mayor Katja Dörner receives her counterpart Ernest Arthur with a delegation
For two years, the Corona pandemic has severely slowed down personal contacts within the framework of Bonn's city and project partnerships. Now, Mayor Katja Dörner has been able to welcome guests in Bonn again. Her fellow mayor Ernest Arthur and his staff members Abdul-Razak Mac-Abubakar (Metropolitan Planning Officer) and Richmond Yeboah (Investor Relations and Press) from Cape Coast, Ghana, visited the Mayor in her office on Tuesday, May 31, 2022.
A short exchange about the topical issues in Bonn and Cape Coast was followed by the signing of the guest book of the City of Bonn. The Mayor also invited the guests to the planned SDG conference of the twin cities in Bonn in September.
Cape Coast: Managing waste generation
Even in times of the Corona pandemic, two new projects were launched with the partner city of Cape Coast through several online meetings. For example, the two partner cities participated in UN Habitat's Waste Wise Cities Initiative, which aims to support African cities in particular in managing waste generation.
Already in 2021, a solid waste survey was conducted in Cape Coast in this context. This was made possible by funding from the Japanese Development Agency. In February 2022, the first results of the analysis were presented at a workshop in Cape Coast, which was attended by representatives of Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly as well as by UN Habitat and the University of Cape Coast.
The project also received support in the form of advice from a German expert recruited by Bonn Orange. It was found that a major problem in solid waste management is the weak funding base, which means that the municipality has hardly any resources to tackle improvements. Based on the report, recommendations for further possible collaborative projects will now be developed.
The first learning lab under the Urban Natural Assets project was also held in Cape Coast in February 2022. The participation of the City of Cape Coast in the ICLEI Africa project came about through the mediation of the City of Bonn. The aim of the project is to strengthen the climate adaptability of cities, especially through nature-based solutions, and thus to protect biodiversity in urban areas. In these activities, the two partner cities can build on their previous cooperation in the Fosu Lagoon renaturation project: https://cbc.iclei.org/una-resilience-cape-coast/ (opens in a new tab)
A visit by the Ghanaian partners to Bonn and Düsseldorf is planned for the end of May 2022 as part of the NRW - Ghana municipal exchange. This first face-to-face meeting after almost three years (the last visit to Bonn took place in September 2019) can hopefully be used as a basis for further revitalization of the cooperation.
La Paz
The overall difficult tense situation made cooperation very difficult. Due to the new elections and the subsequent changes in staff, the contacts at the municipal level had to be rebuilt. In January 2022, a first (online) conversation between the two mayors took place to enable personal contact and mutual exchange. Both Mayors are leading their cities towards climate neutrality and expressed their will to continue working together, also in the framework of @ICLEI and under the @EngGlobal climate partnerships.
In a further video conference with the new staff members responsible for international work, the desire was expressed to work together in the field of health in addition to the existing focus areas of renewable energies, waste management and recycling, and environmental education. Currently, it is being explored whether and in which form cooperation and financial support is possible.
Mayor Ivan Arias took office in La Paz in May 2021. Bonn's Mayor Dörner was particularly interested in his extensive expertise on participation processes. The new mayor of La Paz cordially invited Ms. Dörner to the Bolivian project partner city.