07/17/2006 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council July 17, 2006 Page 3 The Conference was pretty amazing. The four of us will tell you that we left there very much impacted by all of the conferences, sessions and dialogues. By way of background, Sister Cities International is a non-profit citizen diplomacy network that creates and strengthens partnerships between the U.S. and international communities. They strive to build global cooperation at the municipal level, promote cultural understanding and stimulate economic development. SCI is the leader for a local community development and volunteer action. They motivate and empower private citizens, municipal officials and business leaders to conduct long- term Sister City programs. They believe that Sister City programs involve two-way communication which would mutually benefit partnering communities. Mr. Saponaro shared his impressions of the Conference and of SCI. There were 1200 delegates that came from 45 different countries. Although it was an anniversary celebration, he would instead call it a peace conference as without a doubt it was a peace initiative. It was amazing. Their motto is Peace Through People Global Citizenship. Starting off the celebration was Mary Jane Eisenhower, the granddaughter of President Eisenhower. She spoke regarding citizen diplomacy and why she believes it is vitally important to carry on the work of her grandfather when he started the People to People initiative on September 11, 1956. From the People to People initiative, Sister Cities International was one of the programs that was fostered from that. We heard an enlightening session on the challenges and opportunities of global citizenship. A gentleman named Warren Wilson who is a resident of Shaker Heights is also the Managing Partner of the Gallup World Poll. He manages the D.C. office but resides here in Shaker Heights. Pretty amazing information he gave us regarding statistics, people, economics, culture and how everything works together, how we view the world, how the world views us in terms of the United States and so forth. Another eye-opening session. That was on Thursday. Thursday afternoon we were all prepared to go to Capitol Hill to meet with our respective Congressman, in our case Steve LaTourette, because we wanted to ask for his support on legislation for Sister Cities International that provides seed funding to communities to create various international citizen exchange opportunities. They want to have at least 4,325 exchanges per year in over a 5 year period. They want to reach out to Islamic communities through citizen's exchange, so they want to have at least 500 of those and to significantly enhance the community based capacity of the network of Sister Cities International. They had a very productive meeting with Congressman LaTourette. They got their point across and also invited him to visit Mayfield Village. On Friday in the midst of the conflict of the war raging between Israel and Hezbollah, they conducted an Islamic peace and friendship initiative dialogue and heard the amazing testimony of students from Pakistan, Jordan, Israel and Syria who spoke about spending their school year of 10 months with a host family in San Antonio, Texas in Seattle,Washington and in various parts of the country. What an amazing experience it was for them to explain their culture, their religion and their geography to their host families and to everyone at their host high school and also to attend church and various functions to get a better understanding because as a very pointed 16 year old said, "It's all about perspective. It's about fear. We fear each other because we don't know each other." It was pretty moving.