By Dianne Anderson

Everybody who is anybody will converge at the nonprofit Sister Cities International’s first-ever African Regional Summit to network, to talk economic development strategies, and look to make new cultural connections in America.

From all corners of the Motherland, dignitaries will arrive in Cape Town, South Africa for the conference that runs February 20 through 24.

“Ambassadors are coming, presidents of countries are coming, there’s a full agenda of material and presentations to help people with all kinds of logistics and relationships, and basically doing things in a better way,” said Phyllis Venable, president of all Africa Sister Cities Associations, and a director of Long Beach / Mombasa Sister Cities Association.

Beyond the general excitement of gala festivities, the main goal is to increase Sister Cities’ affiliations across America into Africa. Just having those associations means survival for some subsisting in the worst economic meltdown the region has seen in decades.

In terms of donations, she said the hope lies in the strength of the U.S. Dollar goes a long way in Kenya. There, $1 is worth about $100 Kenyan dollars.

There is much more bang for the buck as they work with non-governmental organizations.

“We’ve provided a scholarship for Kenyan students for five years. For $500 we would raise, that scholarship paid for a year’s worth of study at many universities. That discrepancy in economies alone, a small donation is not a small donation for them.”

Sister Cities International was formed in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and includes 545 sister cities, counties, and states in America with 2,121 partnerships in 145 countries on six continents.

Venable, now on the planning committee, was part of the original formation committee 15 years ago. She said the program is not focused on a conference in Africa, but rather an African conference with connections that can make a difference.

Their goal is 505, to bring on 500 new African Sister Cities with United States cities in the next five years. Right now, California has the most Sister Cities in Africa. She said anyone can check out the Sister Cities International website to learn more about how to get connected.

“You can’t stop the global economy and impacts that happen, but you can have partnerships to alleviate and mitigate some issues those cities are going to face,” she said. “That people-to-people diplomacy can’t hurt, it’s got to help in a lot of ways.”

According to Oxfam America, Kenya has suffered a 70 percent drop in crop production with 4.4 million people in acute hunger, now in need of aid. They report 2.4 million livestock deaths have been recorded, and women and children most impacted.

Although Mombasa has water purification kits, it’s not enough to clean the water, she said. The Indian Ocean, high water tables, a lot of salt gets infused in the groundwater, but worse, the dilapidated sewer systems can’t accommodate the population.

Their Long Beach Sister Cities Mombasa project was able to bring a water filtration system that started with a Gates Foundation grant.

“When you look at the statistics, more babies are dying of waterborne diseases on the east coast of Africa than practically anywhere in the world. It has some of the worst water in the world, Kenya to Tanzania, it’s terrible,” she said.

To date, their local program supports several efforts in Kenya, including a primary school where they purchased uniforms. Many parents can’t afford the costly uniforms required to go to public school.

She has also worked to get life-saving supplies into remote village clinics. In all of Mombasa, there is only one government-run hospital, but the city has over three million people.

Locally, she said their Sister Cities Mombasa program partnered with Project Cure to get two forty-foot containers of badly needed medical equipment and supplies for pennies on a dollar, and shipped. They supplied Neonatal incubators, hospital beds, gloves and syringes.

“I was there when it came. We had about 60 volunteers unpacking all that stuff. We distributed it to 13 health clinics and midwife groups in the bush,” she said.

Jesse Johnson, recalls his first trip to Kenya when their organization supported the Likoni AIDS orphanage where homeless children had lost both parents to AIDS. He has since mentored Tom Starrco, who was then 15 years old.

Johnson helped find him a job, and got him a computer. The young man is now a pastor of his own church, married and has a young daughter.

“He started a food drive for street-feeding the homeless kids, I helped him with that. He tries to do it weekly. He said that years ago, that he was one of those kids,” said Johnson, who is also a member of the 100 Black Men of Long Beach.

He plans to arrive at Cape Town for the conference where he will meet up with Venable, and then heads off to Mombasa to catch up with his mentee.

Recently, Johnson presented a congratulatory 15th anniversary resolution to the Long Beach Mombasa Sister Cities Association from the 100 Black Men of Long Beach, Inc., with a copy for attending Ambassador Thomas Kwaka Omolo, the Consulate General of the Republic of Kenya. That event was also attended by U.S. Congresswoman and retired U.S. Ambassador Diane Watson.

Among the Sister Cities’ recent projects, he partnered up with the 100 BMLB for a shoe drive where nonprofits Soles for Souls and Shoes for Schools are among those that have collected many hundreds of shoes to be shipped from San Diego to Mombasa for the Maasai Tribe of Kenya.

“Maasai school children are walking four to five miles to school each way. The shoes are not for the kids, but will be sold by the tribe to build a school there. They’re using the sale of those shoes to support their cause. There’s a famine there. There’s no economy there,” Johnson said.

Every little bit helps when it comes to their projects, the water filtration system that they, along with Mombasa Sister City, helped participate in, the shoes and the drive to build a school for the Maasai.

“It’s the reason I’m involved,” Johnson said. “There will be more partnerships where we get Americans to assist those in the Motherland, Kenya and other parts of Africa.”

For learn more about the Cape Town conference and other information, see https://sistercitiesoflongbeach.org/

To learn more about Sister Cities International, see https://sistercities.org/what-is-a-sister-city/