Sister Cities Committee to Launch Speaker Series

The Senegal Subcommittee of Pasadena’s Sister Cities Committee will launch its speaker series from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Sept. 10.

Donald E. Grant Jr. is scheduled to speak via Zoom at the first meeting.

Grant holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and serves in two executive director roles, one with his boutique training and consulting firm Mindful Training Solutions and the other at Pacific Oaks College’s Center for Community and Social Impact (CCSI).

Grant is an international speaker and workshop facilitator, film and TV consultant and published author. His latest book “Black Men, Intergenerational Colonialism and Behavioral Health: A Noose Across Nations” is available now.

The city has a Sister City in Dakar-Plateau.

Dakar-Plateau has a population of nearly 37,000 people and is one of 19 districts of Senegal’s capital of greater Dakar, serving as its political, financial and commercial center. Dakar is the westernmost city on Africa’s mainland, with a population of 1 million.

Pasadena City Council approved Dakar-Plateau as Pasadena’s sixth sister city – and the first one in Africa – in August 2018, following an exploratory delegation to Senegal led by Boualem Bousseloub and Pasadena City Councilmember John Kennedy in March 2018.

Discussions to form a Sister Cities relationship with an African city date back 22 years, efforts ramped up in 2015 when the Sister Cities Committee created a 15-member ad hoc committee on Africa and appointed Boualem Bousseloub as its chair. Bousseloub is a Pasadena resident who was born in Algiers and has lived in Paris, Albi, Bruges and Sacramento.

Besides Dakar Plateau, Pasadena has established five other Sister Cities partnerships, including with Ludwigshafen, Germany, in 1948; Mishima – Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, in 1957; Järvenpää, Finland, in 1983; Vanadzor, Armenia, in 1991; and Xicheng District – Beijing, China, in 1999.

The idea of partnering cities grew out of the Twin Town concept in Europe in 1946 following World War II. Ludwigshafen was selected in 1948 by the Pasadena branch of the American Friends Service Committee. America’s involvement came in 1956 following President Dwight Eisenhower’s White House conference on citizen diplomacy, out of which grew Sister Cities International (SCI). Pasadena formally established its Sister Cities chapter in 1960.