The Tempe City Council recently appointed Councilman Dennis Cahill and state Rep. Meg Burton Cahill as the new city coordinators for its Sister Cities program to Zhenjiang, China.
The Tempe Sister Cities program started when Skopje, Macedonia, and Tempe became sister cities in 1971. The idea behind the program is to promote cultural friendship and international understanding among people in different cities, especially high school students.
The program currently has affiliations with seven cities around the globe, namely Beaulieu, France; Carlow, Ireland; Hutt City, New Zealand; Regensburg, Germany; Skopje, Macedonia; Timbuktu, Mali and Zhenjiang, China.
Cahill and his wife will act as liaisons between Tempe City Council and the Foreign Affairs Office in Zhenjiang with counterpart Zhonghua Zhang.
"This program has given the people who have grown up in Tempe a chance to travel to different cities around the world," Josh Lader, executive assistant to the mayor, said.
Lader, who is also on the national board of directors for Sister Cities International, participated in the program during his junior year in high school and lived with a Chinese family in Zhenjiang.
"By allowing students to travel to places, they can participate in the student exchange program where they not only acquire a family in different cities, but can also bring back a brother or a sister here in Tempe," Lader said. "I brought a Chinese brother back to Tempe after my visit to Zhenjiang, and I was also a part of their life in China."
Burton Cahill said she and her husband considered this volunteer program a unique opportunity to help the community and enrich global understanding as it allows students from every stratum in society to be a part of the program.
Tempe exchanges 26 students with the various Sister Cities every year. The 52 students often congregate at a field trip or an amusement park to interact and bond.
"I think these sort of activities break down the barriers between people from different countries by taking very small steps," Burton Cahill said. "This program helps build relationships and interestingly, the kids often find out that they have more in common than differences."
Though the program is primarily open to high school students in their junior and senior year in school, teachers can participate in a teacher exchange program.
In the past, the Tempe Sister Cities program has brought students and teachers from Zhenjiang to Tempe to study waste and water management. The Tempe members have also raised money to help build wells in Timbuktu and spearheaded the "Garden of Peace" project which allowed people in Tempe to donate money so that trees could be planted in Timbuktu to help the environment.
Reach Vedatrayee C. Banerjee at
ctitam@hotmail.com.
