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# 56 • MARCH 22 , 2015
# 56 • MARCH 8
receive very little from municipal governments, who don’t
have money for this: and often
times it’s a local group who
they raises money, pays for
their own travel, organizes the
activities and decides where
the priorities are.
In terms of art and culture we
see other exchanges: music,
art, food, cultural activities that
may be exchanged between
museums, basically anything
you can think relative to the
cultural sector.
These are just three basically examples: a lot of cities are
doing similar activities.
What about the 50 American
States, who’s the one with
more programs involved in
Italy?
than Italy are Mexico, Japan,
China, Germany and France.
and the community in order
to finalize businesses. We see
a lot of promotional tourism,
which always is a positive side
effect of these exchanges.
The final area of cooperation
and community development
focuses more on partnership
between mayors, technical
exchanges on a municipal level, which sometimes involve
a city department act. They
As for trade and economic de- essentially exchange best
velopment we see trade asses- practices regarding any activisment and assistance, business ty for which the municipality is
proposal and meetings and responsible: water sanitation,
missions regarding any com- help services, city planning,
mercial sector. Each of them transportation, renewable recan get a lot of assistance and sources … basically any area
guidance from local people covered by the municipal ad8 | WE THE ITALIANS
www.wetheitalians.com
2015
South Carolina, and Spoleto:
the “Spoleto Festival USA” is a
17 days festival in Charleston
which is the an American counterpart to the annual Festival of
Two Worlds in Spoleto.
We generally divide the activities into four major areas: 1)
youth and education; 2) arts
and culture; 3) economic development and trade; 4) cooperation in community development.
In the area of youth and education we see a lot of high school
exchanges, college partnerships, cooperative research
but high school exchanges really are the foundation in the
Sister Cities programs and we
think that they are very important to young people. So this
area is basically focused on
high school level, with a few
university partnerships, studying abroad opportunities
and something like that.
nd
ministration.
Let’s talk about Italy and the
US: how many programs do
exist between cities of our
countries?
We have on rec