Local officials in all countries share common problems—albeit with varying degrees of severity. ICMA CityLinks allows city officials in developing countries to draw on the resources of their U.S. counterparts to find sustainable solutions tailored to the real needs of their cities. In other words, CityLinks improves the capacity of cities to provide quality services to their residents, create a better living space for the community—and sustain those improvements long after the program has ended.
Results from more than a decade of experience and dozens of partnerships demonstrate that this is an effective way to provide common-sense, pragmatic technical support to the growing global urban community. Because the needs of developing countries vary widely, ICMA CityLinks is flexibly designed so that it can be structured to meet a variety of needs.
The ICMA CityLinks approach is based on the premise that local communities can and must make a difference in meeting the challenges they face, and that meeting these challenges requires effective local self-government. Thus, CityLinks seeks to:
- Empower local governments, NGOs, the private sector, and citizens to effect solutions
- Match the skills, knowledge, and resources of the local community with supplemental skills, knowledge, and resources that U.S. partners can share
- Use innovative and flexible partnership models involving various government and nongovernmental counterparts in the United States, host countries, and third countries
- Establish substantive professional relationships between U.S. municipal governments and their counterparts in developing and transitioning countries
- Facilitate greater understanding of the mutual benefits that can be derived when community leaders in the United States, and their international partners, achieve sustainable solutions that enhance the capacities of democratic local government.
