A new sister city!

We’re no strangers to love: Birmingham has a vibrant sister cities program, and it’s expanding!  According to the Jamaica Observer, Birmingham and Kingston, Jamaica signed a sister City agreement this week.

Birmingham has fifteen other sister cities, the first of which was Hitachi, Japan.  While I couldn’t get into contact with the Sister Cities Commission, I was able to learn little more about the program from their monthly newsletter, hosted here.

The Sister Cities Commission is “dedicated to cultivating and promoting global cooperation, cultural understanding, and economic development between the people of the Birmingham metropolitan community and cities around the world.” What that means in practice is that the Commission hosts delegations from other cities, promotes home-stays and foreign exchange programs, and manages humanitarian donations. Also upcoming, according to the newsletter, is a collaboration between the breweries in Czech Republic and Birmingham to make a truly international beer.

Entorno inteligente offered coverage of the signing itself: “The Sister City agreements step outside the political arena. It is people-to-people exchanges,” said Mayor Bell.