Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Lisa Valanti featured speaker on Tuesday, April 17
Ithaca Unitarian Church annex, 208 E. Buffalo St.

Due to a room scheduling conflict, THERE WILL BE NO BEANS&RICE/POTLUCK dinner meeting at the Unitarian Church in April. But, we WILL BE MEETING AT 7 PM for a very important program with Lisa Valanti, president of the US–Cuba Sister Cities Association.

Scenes from Cienfuegos, the province where we would be have a sister community, will be part of her presentation.

Because of the travel restrictions, specifically the repeal of licenses for people-to-people licenses under the Bush administration (dare I say the criminalization of travel?), we might opt to have initial meetings with our counteparts in Cienfuegos in Kingston, Ontario. Kingston has is a sister city with Cienfuegos. The idea of a three-way sister city exchange is particularly intriguing, but is very much ahead of the game at this point.

Lisa suggests four areas for sister cities to work on once people-to-people exchanges, which were repealed by the Bush administration, are restored. They correspond to areas of health and education where Cuba has been particularly strong:

1. study of the literacy campaign and the successful 'Si, se puede' model Cuba has used in many countries of the world, including a recent English program in Jamaica.

2. continuing work w/ Pastors around the Latin American School of Medicine

3. study of the 'school of social work' where disaffected street kids are trained and paid to do community social work, including interviewing residents in their neighborhoods to report on problems folks are experiencing in regard to services that are wanting or lacking.

4. sistering with arts schools --including dance, plastic arts, and music.

These are four areas which she thinks that sister cities can be particularly effective. However, she emphasizes that sister city is an open framework, and she cites many examples from sister restaurants to sister swamps.


In addition, we will be showing clips from the documentary Los Zafiros http:// and discussing a the film's debut in Ithaca and offer of the producer to allow a sister city fund raising event around the movie.