Yes, yes...it's been a while I know. There are substantive postings forthcoming. Plenty to write about despite it being the month of vacations. While some of us are sneaking a holiday before the fall, others in our network our rolling up their sleeves for a serious debate about funding.
In the troubled economy, some sister city programs have been faced with defending their 'value' when it comes to local funding over the past year. A number of communities have suffered program cutbacks in the face of municipal budgeteers nipping and tucking city budgets with no true sense of the big picture impact of their penny pinching. I tell local elected officials, you'll be hard pressed to find another city-supported program that gives tax payers the ROI that a sister cities program does. Most of the funding for local sister city programs comes privately (foundations, corporations, individual donations) and in many cases from the personal wallets of the volunteers involved in the program!
A particular battle getting a fair amount of media is Fort Worth, TX. The Fort Worth Sister Cities International program is one of our flagship programs, a perennial award-winning programs with tremendous support locally and impact abroad. This morning, their plight got the attention of well-respected blogger Matt Armstrong, who writes MountainRunner.us. He makes a case for Fort Worth AND our network's broader value to public diplomacy.
Take a read of his post: http://mountainrunner.us/2009/08/sister_cities.html#comments.
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