ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 17, 1996 TAG: 9606170036
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHA GILBERT STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE HAS SIX Sister Cities, in South Korea, China, Kenya, Russia, Brazil and Poland. Twenty-three members just returned from a 14-day visit to Pskov, our Russian Sister City.
Imagine having a sister whom you didn't know. When the two of you finally met, you might share ideas on cooking, dressing and the differences in your lifestyles. If the sister needed help paying for medical supplies, getting an education or learning a job skill, you'd probably do as much as you could, right?
Well, Roanoke has six Sister City committees that have made it their mission to get to know their diverse foreign "sisters" better. Each city has a different look, personality, set of needs and qualities to offer. Sometimes the foreign sisters are able to return Roanoke's generosity with gifts or scholarships. But quite often, just the feeling of offering a helping hand and getting better acquainted is the intangible return to Roanoke committee members.
Roanoke adopted its first Sister City - Wonju, South Korea - in 1964. Since then, the city's Sister City program has grown to include cities in China, Brazil, Poland, Kenya and Russia.
Twenty-three members of Roanoke's Pskov Sister City Committee just returned from a visit to the Russian city.
"There are a lot of hard-working people living there," said David K. Lisk, executive director of Roanoke Valley Sister Cities. "Everyone is trying to sell something on the street corners like potatoes, cabbage, bananas, cheese and bread to make money. It's like a big flea market."
The Roanokers spent 14 days visiting Pskov, St. Petersburg and Moscow. They returned with vivid Old-World and modern images of the Kremlin walls: groups of prostitutes flanked by their madams, ancient cathedrals, soldiers with machine guns, museums, public outhouses, murals and dusty, pot-holed streets.
The Roanoke group went to deliver medical supplies to health facilities in Pskov, (pronounced "scoff"). Each member took a 40-to 50-pound box of supplies, said Natasha Petersen, chairwoman of Roanoke's Pskov Sister City Committee.
The antibiotics, bandages, cough syrup, aspirin and refurbished computers were either purchased wholesale or donated. New hypodermic needles and rubber gloves also were delivered to replace the ones the Russians had been boiling to recycle.
Don Petersen, a committee member and Roanoke Times photographer, witnessed the medical limitations of the hospitals when, on one of his several trips to Pskov, a colleague fell and broke his nose. The hospital gave him vodka both as a beverage and to cleanse the wound. Also, the X-ray of another injured companion had to be held up to the window because the hospital had no lights for reading the film.
Pskov became one of Roanoke's sister cities in 1992. The other alliances took place with Kisumu, Kenya, in 1976; Florianopolis, Brazil, and Opole, Poland, in 1995; and Lijiang, China, in 1996.
"The goal of Sister Cities is to widen our exposure to culture, the arts and people," said Robert Roth, chairman of the Roanoke Valley Sister Cities board. "By getting to know each other better, we can get rid of fears, misunderstandings and suspicions, which will hopefully prevent wars and break down barriers."
President Dwight Eisenhower's Sister Cities International, formed in September 1956 was the blueprint for Roanoke's program. Today there are 1,100 U.S. cities with partnerships in 128 nations.
"It's not rare for a city the size of Roanoke to have six sister cities," said Rick Gerrard, associate director of Sister Cities International. "Several cities with populations of 100,000 or less have at least as many sister cities as Roanoke." Aspen, Colo., a city of 10,000 people, has five sisters. Cambridge, Mass., with 85,000 people, has seven.
Each Roanoke Valley Sister City committee has 20 to 92 members, who sponsor fund-raisers for the city they represent. Delegates travel to the cities at their own expense or through private or corporate donations. Annual membership dues are $10.
The annual operating budget of the Roanoke Valley Sister Cities Committee is close to $35,000, Roth said.
The City of Roanoke pays the $400 annual Sister Cities International membership dues, said Lisk. For the past two years, City Council has appropriated $10,000 to the program for office rental, a small stipend for the part-time executive director, a clerk and operating expenses.
Future committees will pay a $2,500 initiation fee to offset operational expenses. They must have at least 20 volunteers in both Roanoke and the foreign city for the alliance to be accepted.
This new rule already has been applied to the youngest member of the Sister City family. Lijiang is called "The Plant Kingdom of China" because of its 100-year-old camellia trees with thousands of 9-inch blooms in the spring; "The Venice of China" because it was built on a waterway; and "The Square City" after its unusually shaped roofs. It officially became a member of the family this year.
The 92-member Lijiang Sister City Committee in Roanoke, led by Pearl Fu, sent educational material to teachers in Lijiang. After an earthquake in January, the committee raised $800 at a benefit banquet and sent it through the Red Cross to help Lijiang's victims.
Opole joined the Roanoke family last summer. The bond grew out of a relationship between Opole and the Virginia Local Government Management Association.
As part of a manager-to-manager match-up project, members of the association had been traveling to Opole to assist the residents with the transition from a central government to a local democratic government.
The people of Opole are faced for the first time with deciding what to do with urban traffic and parking. They have to assess property value, now that the government has returned property to the private sector.
"They need help with some of the things we take for granted," said Donald Meyers, assistant Roanoke County administrator and interim chairman of the Opole Sister City Committee. "We have fewer constraints in exercising our freedom. They're coming out from 45 years of being more controlled to having freedom."
Other sister cities also are in need of whatever help their U.S. sister can offer.
Kenya's third largest city, Kisumu has a population of 350,000 that needs to develop employment skills.
The Kisumu Sister City Committee has sent equipment, clothes and supplies to the Kisumu Rotary Youth Training Center.
"Before receiving books they learned by rote," said chairwoman Greta Evans, who is community affairs director for WSLS (Channel 10). "Now students are learning trades to work as brick masons, auto mechanics, carpenters, dressmakers and electricians."
Virginia Western Community College is a sister college to Kisumu's RIAT Institute.
Proceeds from Roanoke's annual Harambee - Swahili for "let's pull together" - celebration, which showcases African music, food, dance and tradition, enabled the committee to send a computer and two fax machines to Kisumu.
Florianopolis was added last year after Shirley Kotheimer visited the orphanage there called "Love's Little Nest," home to 65 children whose parents died of AIDS. Some of the children also are infected.
Kotheimer, chairwoman of the Florianopolis Sister City Committee, sponsored a May concert in Roanoke featuring Brazilian pianist Arthur Moreira Lima to raise money for the home. School supplies and money were sent to the orphanage and to the Freedom House after-school program for homeless children in Florianopolis.
One of the financially self-sufficient sister cities that not only shares its culture but exchanges scholarships and expertise with Roanoke is the 2,000-year-old city of Wonju.
Roanoke College and Virginia Western Community College have traded teachers and students through scholarship and faculty exchange programs with Wonju's SangJi University, said new Wonju Sister City chairman Ken Garren, who also is dean at Roanoke College.
"[Sister Cities is] a people-to-people program," said Lisk, a former chairman of the Wonju committee. "We all have the common goal of having a peaceful existence. It gives a feeling of satisfaction to know each other better."
LENGTH: Long : 154 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: File/1991 1. David K. Lisk of Roanoke (right) presentsby CNBfloral garlands to paratroopers after a parachuting demonstration in
Wonju, South Korea. Color. 2. STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff Students
sew garments at a vocational training school in the Roanoke Sister
City of Kisumu, Kenya. Color. 3. DON PETERSEN/Staff A Russian nurse
reads patient charts at her station in a Pskov hospital. Pskov
became one of Roanoke's Sister Cities in 1992. Color. 4. DON
PETERSEN/staff Pskov's cold climate calls for extra wrapping. This
youngster is all bundled up by her mom. Color.