Editorial
Front Page - Friday, May 21, 2010
Worldly friendships established with Sister Cities Association
Erica Tuggle
Georgia Eastman is the President of the Chattanooga Sister Cities Association. Their goal is to bring people from different countries together to enhance cultural understanding and friendship in the effort toward establishing peace between all nations.
- Erica Tuggle
The bottom line is when you have friends in a country, you are less apt to support your government going to war with them, Georgia Eastman says. As the president of the Sister Cities Association of Chattanooga, which works to bring understanding and a worldly friendship between Chattanooga and other countries, peace between nations is one of her priorities.
 The Peace Grove in Coolidge Park was established by the Chattanooga Sister City Association to honor the sister city connections around the world. Trees were planted - Erica Tuggle
This group prides itself on diversity, and the meetings they conduct are a model of different pieces coming together. During the meeting, Patricia Legere spoke on how she helped to bring a group of Chinese orphans to Chattanooga, the first time this was ever attempted.
Legere’s speech specifically centered on the Living Hope orphanage in China. It is the first orphanage in China to organize children into family units that brought them from living on the streets to apartment like dorms where they roomed in groups of six or eight with two house parents. Legere recounted the setbacks of bringing orphans to the U.S. and the continued effort of helping children who have fallen through the cracks. Her message was heard loud and clear by all in attendance that nothing is impossible, and the right idea will bring about the means to accomplish a task.
Bringing Legere and her family in to the organization was an easy task with the reach of the Sister City Association present from Volkswagen with $200,000 for trees to be planted in the city to the association’s Peace Grove in Coolidge Park recognizing their sister cities.
Eastman says the group specifically keeps their dues low at $20 per person or $25 per
family to encourage everyone
to join, and anyone is welcome to attend two or three meetings to gauge their interest before joining.
The dues and donations the group receives are used in such instances when citizens of a sister city visit. The Chattanooga Sister Cities Association takes them sightseeing, to a meal and shows them what the city is like by inviting them into their homes. The funds will be used when a group of dancers from Korea visits in June to stay the week and perform at Riverbend. Generally, in winter, groups of students from sister city countries visit for five weeks with the UTC English as a second language course. She says students from the sister city of Hamm, Germany visit one year, and the students from Chattanooga visit Hamm the next.
Part of the experience for Sister City members is visiting the countries they call sister. Eastman said the first of the sister cities she visited was Nizhnii Tagil, Russia in 2001.
“They couldn’t have done more for us,” she says. “They were extremely kind, generous people.”
She paints a similar picture of the other sister cities she has visited. All have been welcoming, warm and have opened their homes and hearts to the citizens of their sister city, Chattanooga, she says.
Most of the relationships that have formed into Sister City connections between other countries have stemmed from an already strong friendship, she says. For instance, the 30-year relationship with Hamm, Germany began with Dupont factory locations in Chattanooga and Hamm, where businessmen would have to travel back and forth. She says there is always interest in establishing more Sister Cities with Chattanooga, but several factors hinge on the possibility of that becoming realty.
“It really has to have some sort of link together,” she says. “It’s not something you go into lightly. The last time it was two years of discussing before Gangneung, Korea joined [as a sister city].”
She says the commonalities between the cities, youth involvement, the cities’ sizes, interests and how they can help each other’s economy is part of the assessment. She says Nizhnii Tagil had horrendous air pollution problems, and since Chattanooga had gone through cleaning up their own air, the Sister City Association felt that would be a good partnership. Also, manpower on both ends has to be there to take on new cities.
The limits of the Sister City Association are there because all the members are volunteers and individuals, whereas other countries have governments involved in the relationships and the funding. With more U.S. citizens being aware of the organization and joining, more Sister Cities should be in the future.
“It is not something one forces on the other but rather will be 100 percent agreement,” she says.
The communication between visiting cities is part of breaking down of the language barrier, she says. First it may start with sign language and small phrases, but communication will happen because of the relationships the people of the countries quickly form with one another, she says.
“If we can link people [from other countries] with our Chamber of Commerce so they can establish businesses, then we will have business people going back and forth as well,” she says. “We have got the youth element to have them traveling back and forth, the business element and then everyone else from adults or what not.”
From government officials traveling to the sister cities to the community enjoyment of the Wuxi, China photo exhibit on display at the Hunter Museum of Art this month, the Sister City Association of Chattanooga is behind the scenes
in establishing these worldly relationships based on friendship and understanding.
For information email scachatt @yahoo.com or visit the International Sister City Web page at http://www.sister-cities.org/.
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