News from Our Project Partnerships: Highlights 2019
In late summer, Minsk students were invited by the City of Bonn and the Minsk Club to attend the 4th Energy Seminar in Bonn. Although these seminar participants came from a city of 2 million, they agreed: "We have underestimated Bonn with its 328,000 inhabitants. Bonn is much more lively, more colorful and more international than Minsk!”
The seminar on "Renewable Energies as a Measure to Combat Climate Change" was held for students of Bonn’s project partner city in Belarus for the fourth time already. This year, however, it was jointly organized by the City of Bonn and the Minsk-Club Bonn e.v. And thanks to the support of Engagement Global / Service Agency Communities in One World, more participants could be invited to attend.
In addition to eight students from Minsk and the surrounding area, the Deputy Director of the Energy Center of the City of Minsk also took part in the one-week program in Bonn.
Bonn and Chengdu celebrated the tenth anniversary of their fruitful partnership
Chengdu, capital city of the Sichuan Province, has become an important business hub in China. With its roughly 15 million inhabitants, it is Bonn’s largest partner city. The cities of Chengdu and Bonn have maintained friendly ties since the year 2,000. These have involved close cultural contacts and mutual visits. In 2009, the partnership treaty was signed.
In 2013, both cities signed a climate partnership agreement under the title ‘Bonn-Chengdu Partnership for Sustainable Low-Carbon Development’. Senior experts from the city administration, civil society, the business and scientific community now discuss mobility, sustainable urban development and energy efficiency and related issues during technical conferences and meetings.
The partnership also involves a close cultural exchange and a variety of other mutual encounters.
The tenth anniversary of the partnership was celebrated on Bonn’s Market Square on 1 June. In a varied program, highlights from the province of Sichuan were presented. The public could experience traditional mask changes, the classical tea ceremony and Chinese dances. There were also two singing-along programmes for children and adults as well as performances of the Bonn band "Kochkraft durch KMA", very successful in Chengdu, and Markus Schinkel Trio in the evening.
Visitors could learn about Chinese culture at 9 different market stalls, experience new culinary delights with chefs from Chengdu or see Chinese artisans at work.
The new Metropolitan Coordinating Director Rachel Fousa-Sarpong of Bonn's project partner city Cape Coast in Ghana also paid a visit to Bonn this fall.
At Bonn’s House of Nature, which has just been refurbished and expanded, she informed herself about the new interactive educational offers and the links between the exhibition and the accompanying outdoor program.
Cape Coast has a similar environmental education institution: the Biodiversity Centre. It was established as part of a joint cooperative project between the Cities of Bonn and Cape Coast to renature the local Fosu Lagoon. While in Bonn the focus is on the sensual experience of the forest habitat, in Cape Coast everything revolves around the ecosystem of the lagoon.
October saw the visits of representatives from the two project partner cities of Cape Coast and La Paz, which had been facilitated by the City of Bonn. The delegations participated in a forum on sustainable public procurement, which was organized by the German Development Institute, a Bonn-based think tank. The conference was also attended by a larger delegation from Ghana under the leadership of the Head of the Local Government Service in Ghana, Dr. Nana Ato Arthur, who is a long-time friend of the partnership between Bonn and Cape Coast and who had also taken part in the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the fruitful partnership last year.
The forum was organized in the framework of the ongoing project entitled Municipalities Promoting and Shaping Sustainable Value Creation (MUPASS) – Public Procurement as a Tool for Fair and Sustainable Production.
In times where at least 10% to 20% of the GDP of most countries is generated by public demand, it has long become clear that linking public procurement of goods and services with ambitious sustainability requirements can have a major leverage effect on the transformation towards sustainability.
MUPASS is an international research and dialogue project implemented by the German Development Institute (DIE) in close cooperation with the Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
In November, a delegation from Bukhara visited Bonn to find out more about food hygiene and related topics and engage in a professional exchange against the backdrop of a growing hotel and catering industry in Uzbekistan. An extensive program included visits to various caterers and larger restaurants as well as meetings with food inspectors in Bonn.
A delegation from the Sichuan province government visited Bonn in December to find out more about the German (dual) vocational training system. A lecture was given at the Bonn / Rhine-Sieg Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Meetings also included a discussion with the coordinating officer for municipal training at Bonn’s city administration.
News from Our Project Partnerships: Highlights 2020
A delegation from Bonn’s Belarusian project partnership city visited Bonn at the beginning of February. The delegation from the capital of the Republic of Belarus included the Deputy Mayor of Minsk, Artiom Tsuran, and several representatives of the city administration and Belarusian social and educational institutions. The focus of the trip was the exchange on the topic "Inclusive City in the Context of Agenda 2030". Concrete cooperation projects were developed in several meetings between the city representatives of Minsk and Bonn. The City of Minsk will apply for funds from the Belarus 2019-2022 funding programme for one of these projects. The City of Bonn is providing support in an advisory capacity during the application process.