Last week, at ICMA’s annual conference in Boston, Massachusetts, ICMA’s Director of International Programs, David Grossman, USAID’s Urban Advisor, Nancy Leahy, and Milwaukee, Oregon’s city manager, Bill Monahan sat down with ICMA TV to talk about the current and past efforts of the CityLinks program. You can watch their interview here: http://www.icmatv.com/news/the_work_of_icma_international/.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) first awarded the CityLinks program (known at the time as Resource Cities) to ICMA in 1997. It was based on the premise that well-managed cities are the key to efficient service delivery, economic growth, sound management of resources, community health, and political stability. Since then, CityLinks has connected cities all over the United States with others in Afghanistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guyana, and Zimbabwe, just to name a few! Here’s a complete list of all our past partnerships. ICMA received a new award in 2011 to continue the CityLinks program through 2016, which now focuses on climate change, food security, and water and sanitation challenges.

ICMA linked Tigard, Oregon, a city known for its strong management and budgeting skills with Samarinda, Indonesia, in 2002 to assist the city with financial management. As a result of this successful partnership, Samarinda’s finance staff received training in double-entry accounting and implemented their 2003 budget with this system. In addition, Samarinda established an electronic payment system for its city employees. Bill Monahan, Tigard’s city manager during this initial partnership commented “Tigard has benefited most by providing an opportunity for its staff members to interact with and provide professional assistance to counterparts from Indonesia.”

USAID awarded ICMA an extension for the project, and Tigard continued to help Samarinda with water management through 2005. In 2008, Tigard dedicated a park pavilion to honor the program and Muhammad Salli, the chief administrative officer in Samarinda at the time.

To learn more about this previous partnership, please visit the project page and this article on ICMA International’s website. Please visit the CityLinks website, follow us on Twitter at @ICMACityLinks, and join our Climate Preparedness, Adaptation, and Resilience group on the Knowledge Network.