Dear Community Leaders,
The sister cities or twin towns are local school and/or chamber of commerce programs designed to foster international communication and cooperation. Like the city version of a “pen pal”, a city is assigned one or more similarly sized and situated international cities. Sisters cities usually share characteristics, such as both being coastal cities or island-cities. The programs include exchange students or economic programs.
Sometimes, cities that are in different parts of the world establish relationships to draw attention to each other, make their residents more culturally aware of each other, or foster trade. For example, in the United States, the city of Delray Beach, Florida, has a sister city called Miyazu in Japan.
FINACT executive committee have been discussing the proposal of Canberra’s sister city status to be given to one of Indian cities with ACT government, Indian high commission officials and Indian community leaders. We understand that it is now a time to contour this idea to a reality. Hence we are seeking your input towards proposing an Indian city which is most eligible to be Canberra’s sister city. We may have different opinions on the city we think is appropriate but as per FINACT’s norms we would encourage all the leaders to get together, analyse and discuss the strong points of all the proposed cities and decide on one. This exercise will be followed by collective and strong proposal to the ACT government and parallel discussions with the local government of the proposed city in India.
Please send your suggestions along with supporting arguments before 30 April based on the following points so that the further course of action can be planned.
What are the similarities?
Why do you think this is the best choice?
What are your aims for doing this?
Executive Committee
Federation of Indian Associations of ACT (FINACT)
Important Note: FINACT strongly commend that it is more apposite to pursue and represent for one city rather than many people approaching for many cities to the same authorities.
