Municipal international cooperation: a dashboard of approaches and practices

You want to become internationally active as a local government? You are looking for suitable forms of global cooperation? This dashboard, developed by the Association of Flemish Cities and Municipalities (VVSG) helps you develop an internationalisation strategy that is tailored to your needs, ambitions and capacity.

The dashboard provides an overview of 8 existing approaches. Each approach is briefly described with a definition and some characteristics, such as the added value for local government, participation, duration and budget. To inspire and show that it’s possible, each approach comes with some good practices. A matrix indicating the main characteristics of the different approaches provides further guidance. Expect to learn more about:

1. City-to-city partnerships

2. Twinning

3. International youth work

4. Indirect cooperation

5. Interntional cooperation with the private sector

6. International networks

7. Humanitarian and emergency aid

8. Short-term expertise exchange

HIVA, the Research Institute for Labor and Society of the Catholic University of Leuven, collected the basic information for this publication on behalf of VVSG. The development of this publication was financially supported by PLATFORMA, the Flemish government and the federal government of Belgium.