Moss Point, Mississippi

Moss Point, Mississippi, suffered extensive damage from wind and flooding when Hurricane Katrina struck this city of 15,800 on August 29, 2005. In response Burlington citizens organized a relief campaign to send needed items to the city, and the Mayor's Office established the Moss Point Relief Fund. Moss Point Sister City Timeline and Current Projects and Partnerships.

Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua

In 1984, Burlington, Vermont, began its sister city relationship with Puerto Cabezas, a city of 60,000 inhabitants located on Nicaragua's North Atlantic coast.

Over the years, Burlington has shipped to its sister city sizeable quantities of material and humanitarian aid, including 500 tons of supplies on a "Peace Ship" in 1986, as well as agricultural supplies, educational materials, computers, video equipment, wheelchairs, and fire-fighting tools. Our first cultural exchange project was a book of photographs, Sister Cities: Side by Side, which was published in 1988. In 1990, Burlingtonians helped establish Puerto Cabezas's Vivero Comunal, a community tree nursery. Official, educational, and cultural exchanges between the two cities have involved mayors, firefighters, drug-abuse counselors, photographers, visual artists, folk singers, college students, and entire Little League baseball teams. We are currently preparing to send a used firetruck to our sister city, and we're working with the Vermont-based Institute for Sustainable Communities to support Puerto Cabezas in developing a community action plan for sustainable development.

Yaroslavl, Russia

Burlington established its sister city relationship with Yaroslavl, Russia, in 1988. Since then, exchanges between the two cities have involved mayors, business people, firefighters, jazz musicians, youth orchestras, mural painters, high school students, medical students, nurses, librarians, and the Yaroslavl Torpedoes ice-hockey team. In 1993, Champlain and Trinity Colleges in Burlington sponsored six students from Yaroslavl; since then, dozens of Yaroslavl students have attended Champlain College. In 1997, Burlington Sister City Committee members donated children's books by Vermont authors and illustrators toward the creation of an English-speaking room at the Yaroslavl Children's Library.

Bethlehem and Arad

Burlington first developed sister city relationships with the Palestinian city of Bethlehem and the Israeli city of Arad in 1991. In October of 1996, Mayor Peter Clavelle and our Sister City Committee hosted a four-day visit by Professor Walid Dajani, who represented Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij, and by Arad Mayor Bezalel Tabib. Together, representatives of the three cities signed cooperative agreements - the first-ever sister-city pacts among American, Palestinian, and Israeli communities.

The Burlington-Bethlehem-Arad Sister City Program has sponsored numerous dialogues, exchanges, and projects aimed at developing mutual understanding and building people-to-people relationships. We have sponsored film showings, speakers, and panel discussions. At an educational forum in Burlington, we brought together the Israeli Consul General from Boston and a representative of the Palestinian Mission to the United Nations General Assembly. Our sister city program sponsored teenagers from each of the three cities to attend the "Seeds of Peace" camp in Maine, a highly regarded summer program whose mission is to build peace in the Middle East "one friend at a time." We've also established, in cooperation with local colleges and the Sheraton Hotel, a three-month internship in hospitality and hotel management for students from Bethlehem University. Over the past year, Burlington's Sister City Program has raised funds to aid a variety of organizations providing medical, educational, and humanitarian aid to the people of Bethlehem.

Nishinomiya, Japan

Over the past two years, Burlington and the City of Nishinomiya in Japan have together participated - along with various nonprofit or nongovernmental organizations - in a project known as Renkei, which aims to elevate the concept of sustainability by developing innovative curricula promoting it in school classrooms. Renkei was timed to coincide with the launching of the Period of Integrated Learning in Japan, and the introduction of "sustainability" and "sense of place" in the Vermont Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities (the statewide education framework). Over the course of the project, delegates from Japan and Vermont participated in innovative project applications of education for sustainability, presented education-for-sustainability activities to peers, and shared strategies for broadening the constituency that supports education in the schools.

Burlington, Ontario, Canada

In 1998 Burlington, Vermont, and Burlington, Ontario, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the "Burlington International Games." Alternating each summer between the two Burlingtons, these games have provided youth from both cities with opportunities to engage in memorable athletic competition and friendships. Recently Burlington, Iowa, joined these games.

Sister Lakes

Burlington has also actively participated in regional "sister lake" relationships. These have involved lake biologists and other technical experts, as well as municipal officials from our Lake Champlain Region and communities surrounding Lake Ohrid, on the border of Macedonia and Albania, and Lake Toba in Indonesia. Through these programs, we have exchanged "best practices" for lake management, particularly the management of resources involving multiple political jurisdictions. The Lake Champlain experience inspired the creation of Lakenet, a global network of more than 900 people and organizations in some 90 countries working for the conservation and sustainable management of lakes.

Institute for Sustainable Communities

The Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) is an independent, nonprofit organization that helps communities around the world build better futures, futures that are shaped and shared by all their citizens. ISC focuses on sustainable development, and has managed more than 40 international projects in 15 countries. After visiting ISC projects in Poland and Macedonia, Burlington city officials asked ISC to help Burlington citizens develop a vision for the city in the year 2030 and a plan to achieve that vision. Today the lessons learned in Burlington are being shared with communities around the world. Burlington's former Mayor, Peter Clavelle, serves on ISC's Board of Directors.