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Good Afternoon,
A Sister City is a city with whom you enter into an agreement to
promote cultural, educational and commercial ties. Cleveland is
blessed to have 24 from Lima, Peru, to Alexandria, Egypt, Ljubljana,
Slovenia, to West Mayo, Ireland. Sister Cities can be born out of
migration patterns where a large number of emigres left one city or
region and want to rekindle those cultural ties, or from
pre-existing commercial and cultural relationships as with Beit
She’an, Israel. No matter how they are established, they are a
commitment to shared prosperity between the cities.
Last year we hosted the Inaugural Sister Cities Conference as an
experiment in bringing our brothers and sisters across the world
together to discuss and build on those ties. It was phenomenal and
the conference yielded a deeper understanding of our cities and
their residents on all sides.
Today we are nine weeks away from our 2nd Annual Sister Cities
Conference. It’s 100% virtual and allows even more of our Sister
Cities to join in from home. Please save the date: September 29th
through October 2nd. Join us for this free, cross-cultural building
opportunity.
As a thoughtful and timely gift to Cleveland, our Sister City
Taipei, Taiwan, gifted us 2,000 masks. We distributed those masks to
the Bhutanese Group of Greater Cleveland, Cleveland Public Library,
Jewish Family Services Association of Cleveland, the City of Lorain
and Cleveland Metropolitan School District. All of these groups
serve different parts of the newcomer community, from Holocaust
survivors to farm hands, from refugees to newly naturalized
families.
We thank Taiwan for their spirit of friendship, compassion and
fraternity. This is Sister Cities. This is Cleveland. |
