07/17/2006 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council July 17, 2006 Page 5 talking about peace, all of these Arab students together tallcing about peace, not a bit of coverage, nothing from CNN or the news media that would pick that up and say, okay, we have things going on in the Middle East right now, but there is movement in the right direction, look at this organization. Certainly nothing stopped everyone in that room from moving the ball forward to peace. It was truly amazing. Mrs. Mills indicated that they have programs such as wheelchair programs where they give wheelchairs and crutches to people in the countries that do not have them and are unable to function. In Africa, they give a presentation about technology. Mr. Saponaro added that Citrix is a company that was called in by a Sister Cities organization. Most of them have a little seed money from a municipality, some don't, but what happened there is a core area of Ft. Lauderdale called Collier City was trying to determine what they can do for Collier City to get the economy back up. They decided to create a fish farm and from the fish farm they would sell the fish and from the water they would water the crops. In turn, they created a revenue source. The Sister City was in Ago Go Africa. The Chief of that city came to visit the Sister City and saw this project and was amazed. He asked how they were doing this. Then Citrix, which is somehow connected came in. The Chief said that they want the world to see what Ago Go is truly about. After afour-year period, they brought the Internet to this rural area of Africa and have brought the world to Ago Go and Ago Go to the world. Mr. Buckholtz stated that Citrix was able to figure out that to go to remote parts of the world, since you can't run wire in the jungle or bush areas and mountains because animals will eat through it, you skip layers of technology and go right to the newest technology of wireless. Mr. Saponaro added that the work being done is amazing, how students' lives are being affected, how the school systems that can be more diversified are able to become closer to global citizenry. Mayor Rinker asked about the next step. Mr. Saponaro reported that the next step, following a meeting with the Director of Membership for SCI, was to look at the information provided to Jeff Thomas. The information is being filled out and the process is commencing. We will have to determine which Sister City we will choose. There is no competition, other Sister Cities will provide assistance to us on how they commenced their program. There is a program called best practices where they go around and provide information to us through CD or documentation. The program is very collaborative. People want to help other people. You go through this process and receive assistance from everyone. We have to take this and move forward to the next step. The other important piece of this program is that there is something called YES. There was a Youth Summit that took place at the same time. Over 200 students from all around the world attended the Youth Summit. There was a program that was put together specifically for Islamic Arab students to come to the U.S. That program is huge. These students were amazing. When we talked to them they asked if our community would be open enough to host an Arab student. They are very eager and want to get the word out. These are amazing people who could really impact everyone. We will prepare the paperwork portion of it, get it together and present it back to Council.