11 July 2006
Sister Cities To Mark 50 Years of Citizen Diplomacy
Promoting peace, mutual respect, understanding, goals for projects
Washington -- As representatives of the global "sister cities" movement gather in Washington July 13-15 to mark the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s White House Conference on Citizen Diplomacy, sister-city programs worldwide continue to link cities and people in educational, cultural and economic activities.
More than 1,000 sister-city activists from around the world are expected to attend the celebration. The festivities will include a conference entitled "A Historic Event for the Future of Citizen Diplomacy.” Pulitzer Prize historian Michael Beschloss is scheduled to deliver the keynote address to an audience from approximately 30 countries.
Dignitaries scheduled to address the gathering include Dina Habib Powell, assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. Several members of Congress also have been invited to speak.
Other key elements of the celebration will include a Raise My Voice Campaign to enroll thousands of new citizen diplomats in international activities and a National Summit on Citizen Diplomacy offering practical workshops to assist delegates in spreading the reach of the sister-city program and citizen diplomacy.
SISTER-CITY CONCEPT
The idea of "twinning" a community with a foreign counterpart is believed to have originated during the World War II. In 1944, the Canadian port city of Vancouver became sister city to the recently liberated Soviet port city of Odessa. Vancouverites sent badly needed reconstruction supplies and held an "Odessa Week" to celebrate Russian and Ukrainian culture.
With the war's end, Europeans in particular embraced cross-border linkages between communities as a means of cultivating mutual understanding and forestalling another armed conflict. Thus, only two years after the conclusion of hostilities between Great Britain and Germany, Bristol, England, and Hanover, Germany, were twinned. The Bristolians sent food and clothing and the cities initiated a series of education exchanges. Today, an estimated 25,000 residents of the two cities have visited their sister city and contributed to a lasting international friendship.
In 1956, President Eisenhower initiated the U.S. “People-to-People” program, forerunner of the U.S. sister-city movement. "If we are going to take advantage of the assumption that all people want peace, then the problem is for people to get together and to leap governments … to work out not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other," Eisenhower said.
In 1967, Sister Cities International (SCI) was founded. The nonprofit citizen diplomacy network encourages sister-city partnerships between U.S. and international communities and works to "promote peace through mutual respect, understanding and cooperation -- one individual, one community at a time."
Among SCI’s programs is Wheelchairs for Peace, a five-year effort to distribute wheelchairs to sister-city communities throughout the world. Through this initiative, American communities have supplied wheelchairs to their sister cities in China, Morocco, Peru, Moldova, Poland, Mexico, Lebanon, Mali and South Africa, among others.
American towns and cities help their sister cities in a number of ways. Engineers from Portland, Maine, for example, have worked to increase and improve the potable water supply at a hospital in Portland’s sister city in Haiti, Cap-Haitien. Denver donated a septic truck to Axum, Ethiopia, where lack of a sewer system has led to sanitation problems. Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has spearheaded an Internet access and training center in Agogo, Ghana.
The sister-city movement today reaches 2,500 communities in 134 countries.
ONE CITY’S EXPERIENCE
While a helping hand always is appreciated, sister-city relationships are about mutual benefit and enrichment. The links forged by one U.S. community, the city of Fort Worth, Texas, illustrate the rich variety of ties.
In 1985, Fort Worth entered into its first sister-city relationship, with Reffio Emilia, Italy. The two communities since have engaged in a wide variety of educational, cultural and sporting exchanges, including a Handicap Life Skills Symposium and a Wheelchair Basketball Tournament. Two years later, Fort Worth and Nagaoka, Japan, became sister cities. In addition to an annual two-week educational exchange, the cities exchange experts in firefighting, rescue and Red Cross training.
Since 1987, Fort Worth and sister city Trier, Germany, have exchanged university students, musical and ballet companies and even exhibits of regional cuisines. A sister-city arrangement signed in 1990 with Budapest, Hungary, (the first between an American and a Hungarian city) brings students from the TCI Cliburn Piano Institute (now known as Piano Texas) to Hungary and Franz Liszt Academy Scholars to Fort Worth.
In 1990, Fort Worth became the first U.S. community to partner with an Indonesian counterpart. The sister-city tie to Bandung has created student internships in the fields of municipal waste water treatment, security and management, medical and nursing training programs, and a variety of economic, sports and cultural exchanges.
As the international SCI delegates celebrate their organization's first 50 years, their real successes -- whether measured in artists performing, wheelchairs delivered or minds opened, demonstrate the value of international exchanges.
Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes repeatedly has endorsed people-to-people exchanges. "The more we know each other, the better we will understand each other," she told a group of young Moroccan women. (See related article.)
Additional information about Sister Cities International is available on the organization's Web site.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
