Sister, sister
Sister city relationships can have economic - as well as cultural - benefits
Fitchburg Sister City Committee Chairman Marcia Bellermann is only too happy to use the words of friend Paul Friedhoff, a German parliamentarian, when talking about the benefits sister city relationships can bring.
"As Mr. Friedhoff said, when you know people, and feel a close association with them, it's very hard to start a war with them," Bellermann said. "It's hard to kill your friends, meaning that more friendship around the world would make for a far better climate worldwide."
Fitchburg and Kleve
In June, Fitchburg hosted a trade delegation from sister city Kleve, a German city of 50,000 on the Dutch border. They toured regional industry (notably Clinton's Nypro plant), enjoyed Massachusetts culture (the Boston Pops, a Boston Harbor cruise) and even made a quick jaunt "home" (Boston's German consulate).
Though they're not terribly frequent - two other Kleve delegations have visited in the past decade - Bellermann said the visits are a valuable tool on both ends. She said she hopes a group of Fitchburg businesspeople and politicians can return the visit in the coming years. (She, like many sister city organizers, has spent her share of time overseas, namely in other Fitchburg sisters Kokkola, Finland and Tianjin, China.)
"Generally, (the Germans) made the rounds, seeing what is here and how their businesses meld with ours," she said.
Fitchburg's relationship with Kleve began more than 20 years ago, when Friedhoff - then owner of Quantron Inc. - instructed the company's Fitchburg office to become more active in the community. Before long, a full-blown sisterhood was born.
In the years since, the cities have staged museum, sports, music and student exchanges, and Fitchburg gives away a German vacation including a trip to Kleve at an annual festival.
Worcester and Pushkin
Though Worcester -- for obvious reasons - maintains a relationship with Worcester, England, its main sister city partner is Pushkin, Russia. Located near St. Petersburg, the city contains nearly 90,000 people, and was famed a more than century ago as a summer home of Russian czars.
Now, Royce Anderson, the executive director of the International Center of Worcester, spearheads the sisterhood between the somewhat similarly sized cities. In addition to its higher education facets, he said, the relationship between Worcester and Pushkin is advanced by economic factors.
"We try to keep things going mostly on kind of a business level," said Anderson, who lived in Russia for two years in the early 1990s.
The sister city program - which became part of the ICW in 1998 -helped Pushkin found its chamber of commerce in 1994, and some regional businesses made a mint in Pushkin in the formative years of Russia's capitalistic economy.
Of course, some lost, too.
"We had a number of businesses working over there," Anderson said. "There were a lot that went in early, and either made their money fast and got out or got burned and got out. It really was kind of a gold rush situation over there throughout the 1990s."
Anderson said the sister city program is increasingly important to businesses as the international reputation of the U.S. is sullied. One of the ICW's main focuses in the coming months, is an "alarm call" to local businesses to focus their overseas efforts to build diplomacy through business.
"The American image overseas is starting to affect local pocketbooks," he said.
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