Sister Cities | Politics Matters

About Our Guest

Appointed by Council, the Charlottesville Sister City Commission is an organizing body devoted to assisting the individual Sister City relationships with community activities and promotion.

The City of Charlottesville is an active member of Sister Cities International, a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network that creates and strengthens partnerships between U.S. and international communities. This network strives to build global cooperation at the municipal level, promote cultural understanding and stimulate economic development.

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Program Transcript

Jan Paynter: Hello, I�m Jan Paynter, and I would like to welcome you again to our program, Politics Matters. Our guest today is Charlottesville city Mayor Dave Norris. Mayor Norris was born into a military family at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, and in Northern Virginia. He received a BA in politics and history from Curry College in Massachusetts and an MA in government from William & Mary. Mayor Norris moved to Charlottesville in 1995, was voted onto City Council in 2006, and elected mayor in 2008.

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Professionally, he has served as [a] nonprofit director and in his civic life he has worked to promote affordable housing, to further the cause of social justice, and to advance responsible use of our environment. Dave is executive director for Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Blue Ridge, served as executive director of PACEM, is a founding director for Connecting People to Jobs initiative, and is coordinator for the Virginia Economic Development Corp.�s microloan program. He has served on the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Piedmont Housing Alliance, the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless, and JABA. Welcome, Mr. Mayor.

Dave Norris: Thank you, good to be here.

Jan Paynter: Today we�re going to explore the topic of Charlottesville�s sister city partnering relationships and what they can mean for our community. In an age which is as we all know increasingly global in every aspect of our lives, understanding the landscape of other nations can be a way of coming home for a country whose roots reach around the globe and back again. In preparing this program, I was discussing with a friend the off-cited idea that it is difficult to dislike, much less hate, an individual when you become to know and understand them. He then put me in mind of a quote by Lincoln which was more than apposite, �I don�t like that man, I must get to know him better.� This deceptively simple statement of truth is perhaps the best rationale for the need to consider city-to-city exchange and partnerships. First of all, Dave, let�s hear a little bit about the organization Sister Cities International. What is it, and how does it function?

Dave Norris: Well, Sister Cities International is essentially a network of all the communities around the globe that participate in these sister city relationships. There are dozens and dozens of countries that are now members who have cities who are members of Sister Cities International who have paired up cities in one country with another country and, to promote international exchanges to encourage people to reach out beyond their borders, get to know people from another way of life, know their background, know their culture, and I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said that if you develop a relationship with somebody, if you get to know somebody, it�s much harder to hate them, it�s much harder to distrust them, and what sister cities is really all about is about building connections between peoples and expanding the horizons of people so that they can see there�s much more to the world than just what�s, you know, around the corner, or even, you know, a couple hundred miles away. It�s a great opportunity for residents of Charlottesville in our case to be exposed to cultures and ways of life that are quite different in some ways but quite similar in other ways, and I�m really pleased to see the program growing, and it�s gotten tremendous support from the community here and I think there�s lots of opportunity in the future.

Jan Paynter: Well it�s very exciting. How long has Charlottesville been involved in sister city coalitions?

Dave Norris: Our oldest sister city is about 30 years old, actually a little bit over 30 years old. It was created during the bicentennial. It was a partnership between Charlottesville and a city in Italy called Poggio A Caiano, and the reason [for] the connection with the bicentennial is that there was a gentleman named Filippo Mazzei who was one of, a close friend of Thomas Jefferson who was influential in the early days of the Revolution here in this country, and in honor of that friendship that those two gentlemen had, Charlottesville and Poggio A Caiano, which was Filippo Mazzei�s hometown, decided to create a sister city linkage back around the bicentennial and since then there�s been numerous exchanges back and forth between Charlottesville and Poggio, and that�s probably our strongest sister city relationship. Since then there�ve been three other sister cities, sister city partnerships created. We have a partnership with a city in France called Besancon, which our former mayor, Blake Caravati, was instrumental in setting up. We have a partnership with a city in Bulgaria called Pleven, which our former city manager, Gary O�Connell, helped to set up. And then most recently we have a relatively new sister city partnership with a city in Africa, in Ghana, called Winneba, which I�ve been very involved in along with some other folks here in Charlottesville, and it�s been a wonderful opportunity.

Jan Paynter: I know you�re very excited about talking about that and at the end of the program I definitely want to hear from you about that. How do you go about choosing sister cities, when people think they might be interested in it? What�s the criteria, what protocol do you have to follow?

Dave Norris: Well until recently there wasn�t a set process or there weren�t specific criteria for doing this. But a couple years ago, the City Council decided we want to formalize our sister city program, which had been a little bit loose nit in the past, formalize it, we actually created, two years ago we created a standing Sister Cities Commission, which local citizens are appointed to, to help oversee the sister city program, that commission, one of its first tasks was to come up with formal criteria for approving new sister cities so that it didn�t happen just sort of randomly, but that there was a real thoughtful effort put into justifying it and, and advancing it. Winneba in Ghana was the very first city to go through that new process. It�s an excellent process, [it] asks a lot of questions about the nature, the potential nature, of the relationship, is there community support here in Charlottesville? Sister cities can�t function, can�t survive, if they�re, unless they�re really owned by the community, it can�t be something that just one official does or one, somebody in City Hall takes on, it�s really gotta be owned by the community, and so we wanna know is there community support for this to sustain it over time both financially and otherwise. That�s the other thing, is that the city doesn�t have, the city of Charlottesville doesn�t have a lot of funding available for sister cities so most of the funding has to come from the community, from individual donors �

Jan Paynter: I see, I see.

Dave Norris: � business donors, et cetera. And so there is now an official criteria, there�s official commission, and it�s in a real good place right now.

Jan Paynter: Do you choose them based on, sort of, the geography, similar institutions, a university, medical facility, or its community? How does that happen?

Dave Norris: Yes, all of the above. You want to look for, we want to, the goal is to try to find communities that are similar in that, you know, we wouldn�t want to be matched up with a huge city somewhere where we may not be on similar paths or similar circumstances. The idea of sister cities is we can learn a lot from each other, both about how to provide public services but also we learn each other�s culture, we give opportunities for young people to travel back and forth to be exposed to other cultures. There�s opportunities for business relationships, investment, trade. There�s all kinds of opportunities so you wanna find communities that are roughly equivalent where we can foster those kinds of exchanges. Until recently we didn�t have any sister cities outside of Europe, and the reality is there�s a lot more to the world than just Europe, and so Winneba in Ghana was our first attempt to break out of that mold, but, so I think geography is important, and I would say it�s really if and when we get to the point of looking at additional sister cities, I would expect cities that would be in Asia or Central America or South America or the Caribbean, would probably get priority more than cities in Europe or even in Africa.

Jan Paynter: What is meant by the term, I encountered this, �citizen diplomacy� and how does it function in connection with the sister city process?

Dave Norris: Well, you know, it�s similar in some ways to the Peace Corps, other efforts to engage American citizens in service and partnership with communities around the globe, where we can be, our people can be ambassadors for our country in a way that official ambassadors are limited. When we went to Africa or when I went to Italy, or others have gone to France or Bulgaria, you can create direct relationships with citizens of these other cities and stay in their homes and patronize their businesses and participate in their festivals and eat their food, it�s citizen-to-citizen diplomacy that builds bridges between nations, and I honestly feel like if, you know, if you look at all the hot spots around the globe that are either active, there�s active strife or potential for strife, if we had, if there were more sister cities between those nations, between those peoples, where everyday citizens and local officials and business leaders and artists and students had developed relationships, I think people would be less willing to support strife and warfare and bloodshed.

Jan Paynter: It makes a lot of sense. One of the things I�ve noticed is Sister Cities International talked about was the fact that you could actually reduce the amount of terrorism �

Dave Norris: Oh sure, sure.

Jan Paynter: � an obvious point of what you�re talking about. How have you found, mayor-to-mayor partnering, how does that work and have you found it useful in terms of democratic governance? Shared ideas?

Dave Norris: Certainly. I�ve met two mayors now, well I�ve actually met three, but I�ve gone to visit the sister city in Italy and the other one in Winneba in Ghana, got to be able to sit down with the mayors of both of those cities, talk to the mayors about, you know, their communities, how governance works there. It�s fascinating, I�m a student of government and of politics and so I always enjoy hearing about how other parts of the world structure governance. You know, in Africa, for instance, in Ghana, I won�t get into a lot of detail, but there�s two separate basically lines of governance, you have the traditional governance, which is the chieftains, the tribal chieftains, who still have a significant amount of power and then you have the civil authorities who are elected or appointed similar to, you know, what we have here in this country. And there�s often tension between the traditional authorities and the civil authorities, and it�s not entirely clear who�s responsible for what, so that for me as a student of politics is fascinating.

Jan Paynter: Oh it certainly is fascinating. OK, for practical matters, where does the money come from for this?

Dave Norris: I just said, the city puts in a little bit of money, not so much to fund trips for elected officials, most of that money has gone toward in recent years, delegations that visit from our sister cities to be able to help cover some of their costs, just being being a good host.

Jan Paynter: Sure.

Dave Norris: But, for instance, when we went to Winneba in 2009, the city of Charlottesville didn�t put a dime into that, that was 100 percent money that was raised from the community. Some individuals paid out of pocket who went on that trip, we had fundraisers in the community, actually the Dave Matthews Band chipped in a significant amount of money to support the cost of that trip.

Jan Paynter: Oh, they�re so involved [inaudible].

Dave Norris: Oh they�re wonderful.

Jan Paynter: It�s remarkable, yeah.

Dave Norris: But when we have youth groups that go back and forth, for instance, almost every year a group from Charlottesville, a group of young people go and participate in a soccer tournament in Poggio A Caiano, it�s an exchange, soccer exchange, it�s great, because, you know, in other parts of the world, well it�s �football� there, they just love football.

Jan Paynter: And sports is the great equalizer.

Dave Norris: Sports is a great equalizer.

Jan Paynter: Yeah.

Dave Norris: And so they raise money for that trip all, again, all from the community. Most of the money that funds the trips in the exchanges comes from the community.

Jan Paynter: It�s good to know because as you know, there�s been some criticism about awhile back about some funding, and things like that happen �

Dave Norris: Mhmm.

Jan Paynter: � I think.

Dave Norris: Well, I think if you�re a taxpayer and you�re looking at priorities, and you see the city cutting funding for schools, for instance, or, or whatever, not that we�ve had to do that here, but in Albemarle County, for instance, they�ve cut money for schooling, you see local governments having to make really tough choices then some people will ask the question, Well, then why are we putting any money into the sister city program? I happen to believe that in the grand scheme of things it�s a tiny amount of money we put into the program, the sister city program, but I believe it pays great rewards, particularly for those members of our community who do have a chance to either to travel abroad or interact with people when they travel here. I really do think it�s enriching to our community.

Jan Paynter: Yeah, I know that recently there was a French-American gospel exchange �

Dave Norris: Right, right.

Jan Paynter: � which was tremendously successful �

Dave Norris: Right, absolutely.

Jan Paynter: � which a great friend of sister cities, Louisa Dixon �

Dave Norris: Mhmm, yeah.

Jan Paynter: � help organize and manage, and so, that was a tremendous success �

Dave Norris: It was, it was.

Jan Paynter: � on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dave Norris: And that�s one where there wasn�t a dime of city money that went into that one, so there�s, the little money we do put in tends to leverage a lot more money from the community, from private sector �

Jan Paynter: Yeah, I think that the main complaints I think people sometimes hear is that it�s perhaps a bit elitist or there�s a finite number of people involved in it, and from what you can see, that is not the case?

Dave Norris: Well, I think it�s a good, it�s a good point because if a sister city relationship is only about elected officials and community leaders having the opportunity to travel or interact with people from other countries then I don�t think it�s a success. I think, I think successful, the successful sister city relationships are those in which everyday citizens have a chance to travel or interact with folks from other countries, and I can give you numerous, numerous examples of how that�s happened here in Charlottesville.

Jan Paynter: What kind of business opportunities come about as a result of this involvement?

Dave Norris: Well I�d say that�s one area which we haven�t really, we haven�t seen a lot of movement yet in our sister city program is open the door to business exchanges and trade. I recently had a meeting where I was talking to folks about, you know, I wondered, we were wondering if, if there might be an opportunity to either work with one of the existing retail merchants in the city or maybe set up a new enterprise that offers goods, retail goods, from our various sister cities. We could import them and then sell them here because there are some beautiful, you know, art work, clothing, jewelry, you name it, products that are made in, in Ghana, France, Italy, Bulgaria. I could see that having some potential, but I�d say right now it�s pretty limited. I was actually excited to hear this morning, I found out this morning that at the Darden School in a couple weeks, or maybe this week, they�ll be having a forum about business in Africa, and so I�m hoping to be able to get over there to be able to participate in that to learn about how we can use this sister city program to encourage business relationships in our new sister city.

Jan Paynter: I know people would be interested in that. Areas of youth mentoring in education, tell us a little about that.

Dave Norris: Well we�ve had students from our sister cities come and study here in Charlottesville, and that�s been great, it�s been not a lot, there haven�t been a lot of students so far. As I�ve said, we�ve had youth groups go over from Charlottesville to visit our sister cities, whether to play soccer, the youth orchestra is going over, the Charlottesville Youth Orchestra is going next, this summer to Poggio A Caiano to perform there. In Winneba, Winneba has one of the best youth choirs in the world, and one of our goals is to try to see if we can�t get that youth choir to come and perform in Charlottesville.

Jan Paynter: I know they have a thriving music scene there �

Dave Norris: Oh, sure.

Jan Paynter: � that�s quite remarkable.

Dave Norris: One of the projects that we�re looking at doing in Winneba is helping Winneba to build their first public library, they don�t have any libraries. You know �

Jan Paynter: Wow.

Dave Norris: � and Charlottesville is such a book-friendly town. This is a project that we chose because we know that, we feel like it�s something that people in Charlottesville can really get behind, the idea of helping this community to build their first library �

Jan Paynter: Ah, that�s a tremendous idea.

Dave Norris: � to equip it with books, with donated books. It�s still in the early stages, but one of the aspects of that, it won�t just be a library but also have a computer center, computer lab there, and actually the associate, the assistant director of Computers for Kids, which is a youth mentoring program here in Charlottesville, just spent three weeks in Winneba, just got back yesterday I think, and was exploring the idea of creating youth-to-youth, student-to-student networks, using the Internet and basically having students from both of our communities connect with each other, relate with each other, and it�s very exciting.

Jan Paynter: How about issues of water? Because water is, we know is going to be one of the great issues of our, of the twentieth, 2011 and beyond. So have you gotten some ideas, in the area, we�re in the midst of dam versus dredging kind of controversy between the county and the city.

Dave Norris: One thing that Europe is, Europe is far ahead of us, and Besancon especially, which, Besancon, the city in France, really prides itself on its, on being really innovative with green design, green development, environmentally friendly construction, which includes a real emphasis on water conservation and energy conservation in addition to many other aspects, so there�s certainly a lot that we can learn from our sister city there about how to get smarter about water conservation, water efficiency. In Ghana, it�s a totally separate set of issues relating to sanitation, where there�s still, you know, there�s large parts of that country that don�t have indoor plumbing, that don�t have access to clean, safe water, and we have wonderful resources here in the city and at the University of Virginia where we can help places like Winneba to develop their water infrastructure, which I think is a pretty neat opportunity.

Jan Paynter: This is an unfairly reductive question, I know, but if you looked at each of the four sister cities and you could pick one thing from each of them that you have found the most profound in terms of learning, it�d be interesting to hear.

Dave Norris: I�ll speak about, well Besancon I haven�t been to yet, but people from Charlottesville who�ve been there always speak about how innovative and committed they are to environmental sustainability, and in fact there was a student from Charlottesville, a college student, who went to visit Besancon last year and wrote a thesis paper about this very topic, about how Besancon is incorporating environmental sustainability in all of its operations and how we might, we might adopt some of those same practices here, so that�s one from Besancon. From Winneba, far and above, I�ve traveled to a lot of places in my life to 30-some-odd countries and 49 states, I�ve never been anywhere in my life where I felt safer, walking around the city at all hours of the night, which I did when I was in Winneba, there is such a, they don�t have a culture of stranger-on-stranger violence there, they have such a strong ethic of hospitality, they greet everybody as �friend,� when you meet somebody one of the first things they ask you is, �How�s your family?� You know �

Jan Paynter: That�s remarkable.

Dave Norris: � it�s just such a very warm, generous people, and I think we could learn a lot. I actually felt safer walking around Winneba at night than I do walking around Charlottesville at night, and I feel pretty safe walking around Charlottesville, don�t get me wrong, but that to me was a real profound, eye-opening experience. Poggio, Poggio is a city, an old city, as many European cities are, and they do a really good job of historic preservation, which I think we have that ethic here in Charlottesville, but I feel like we could do even more in that regard. I�m not as familiar with Pleven. Pleven is a sister city that really hasn�t seen much activity in recent years. If we had the same criteria now for sister cities, in other words, in showing that there�s broad community support to sustain it, opportunities for all kinds of exchanges then we probably wouldn�t have chosen Pleven now, with the process we have now. So I can�t really say much about Pleven, but certainly the other three there�s a lot we can learn.

Jan Paynter: How does the city plan to increase awareness about sister city projects and increase funding as well?

Dave Norris: One of the things is we are building a better sister city webpage to be able to tell the story of each of these partnerships that will be part of our city�s website, and then each of the individual sister cities has volunteers that are involved in nurturing those relationships and, for instance, with the Winneba sister city partnership, we�re creating, we�re in the process right now of creating a website just for that that will be linked to the Charlottesville sister city website, which is going to have a lot of information �

Jan Paynter: Oh, that�s great.

Dave Norris: � and, you know, and just I think just using the media from when we have visitors from abroad. When the folks from Winneba came here this past year, we had a lot of media attention, and they were very visible in the community for a good 10 days, which was nice.

Jan Paynter: Ah, that�s terrific. Um, let�s see if we have a little bit of time here. Um, do you wanna tell us a little, your favorite Winneba story? Because I promised at the beginning, I�m interested.

Dave Norris: There�s so many stories. We went in 2009, May of 2009, in the first week of May, in the first week of May, the first Saturday of May in Winneba every year is their biggest annual festival, it�s called the Aboakyer Festival. I often liken it to Mardi Gras here in this country. It�s a big festival, they have parades, they have music, they have dancing, um, they have all kinds of rituals, and people come from all over Ghana to Winneba for this weekend for this Aboakyer Festival. Um, that�s, so we�re hoping to go back this year for the Aboakyer Festival as well. Um, just being there amidst all this festive chaos (laughing) �

Jan Paynter: (Laughing) �Chaos,� I like that.

Dave Norris: � it was very fun, but they just really rolled out the welcome mat. When we came into town, there�s this huge banner over the main square in Winneba that says �Welcome Charlottesville, Winneba Loves You� �

Jan Paynter: Aw, that�s wonderful.

Dave Norris: � they just, again, there�s just such a strong culture of hospitality there, I just can just tell you so many stories.

Jan Paynter: Dave, I want to thank you for coming and speaking with us today about this very fascinating topic, and I hope people will get involved. Our city�s very informative website recounts the history of Charlottesville�s earliest experience with sister city partnering, as Dave was saying at the beginning of the program, Poggio A Caiano, and as he mentioned also, the Italian Filippo Mazzei forged a friendship with Franklin and Thomas Adams while he was doing business in London. And at their suggestion, he relocated to Virginia in order to increase his business and received then an introduction by Adams to Jefferson. The site quotes, Jefferson then shared views about democratic principles and that Mazzei introduced Jefferson and Charlottesville to Italian grapevines. I can think of no more fitting metaphor for the exciting possibilities of interrelationships and learning between partner cities. We share a common root system, why not come to the table and share the harvest. My thanks again to Mayor Dave Norris for his informative discussion. Thank you at home for joining in our conversation. If you would like to find out more about Charlottesville sister city partnerships, you can consult Sister Cities International at www.sister-cities.org, the city of Charlottesville website as Dave is discussing, as well as our website at PoliticsMatters.org. We are very interested in hearing from you with questions, concerns, and ideas for upcoming programs. You can email us at info@politicsmatters.org. We are Tuesday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Thank you again, and until next time, I�m Jan Paynter, and this is Politics Matters.