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Charlotte Sister Cities


Raintree21

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Charlotte has 7 sister cities. On the charmeck website it says:

"Over the forty-three year history of Charlotte Sister Cities countless people interested in forming relationships based on friendship, business, culture or profession have made a connection to like-minded residents in a Sister City and many have grown into permanent relationships extended to other family members, colleagues or friends."

But I ask, besides "making friends," what's the point? Does Charlotte get anything out of this deal or are we just pouring money into other countries with no benefit?

Baoding, China

Arequipa, Peru

Krefeld, Germany

Wroclaw, Poland

Voronezh, Russia

Limoges, France

Kumasi, Ghana.

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Anyone here have any idea how much money is involved with this? There's gotta be some sort of money flow going on. How about taking that money and instead putting it towards things that make CHARLOTTE better instead of some other country a thousand miles away.

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sheesh guys... this is just a cultural exchange thing, where they occassionally make proclamations about what is going on in the sister cities.

It is a good way for people in those places to think about what is going on here, and vice versa.

By the way, this is the oddest thing ever, but my best friend was born in kumasi, ghana (his dad worked at the embassy).

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Sister cities aren't quite the joke that some of you are making it out to be. There are benefits related to commerce and trade, but even the "making friends" aspect can mean a lot.

For example: one of Asheville's sister cities was Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. The program didn't last long since Karakol is a pretty remote place, but as a result of the process, there was a girl from Karakol who came to Asheville as an exchange student, and she ended up in my senior class. Seriously, how many times in your life do you get a chance to talk with and hang out with a girl from a small town in Kyrgyzstan? Conversely, how often does it happen that a 18 year old girl from Kyrgyzstan gets a chance to spend a year at a high school in Asheville, North Carolina? You may say "it's just one person so who cares" but the impact that one person can have on a large group of people is not to be underestimated.

At first her English was shaky at best, but she got better pretty quickly - and it soon became evident that she had an incredibly interesting and very unique perspective on the world. In Kyrgyzstan, unlike some other muslim countries, girls generally have the same opportunities for education as boys do, but societal roles and expectations are still very strict, and hearing someone my age talk about it from personal experience was quite eye-opening.

I really regret not talking to her more, but I kept in touch for a couple of years, even until after 9/11, where we exchanged a couple of E-mails where she told me what people from over there thought about the whole incident. It was amazing. You don't get that kind of perspective from CNN.

Anyway. Make your own decisions over whether these programs are worthwhile or not, but please, AT LEAST DO SOME RESEARCH before you start bashing them.

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I risk sounding bad and I definitely think that we need exposure to other cultures so that we're more diversified but my whole point was that I think that money, education, whatever should be spent on our people first. We have enough problems here with poverty, hunger, illiteracy, etc. For the example of the girl from Kyrgyzstan, how much of that money could have been spent on helping an inner city youth or helping a homeless person get started again? We see time and time again the U.S. helping other countries, allowing people to come here and get an American education and they return to their countries to make war against us, bash us, or stay and perform espionage against us using their newfound technical education. I know that the majority of the time this isn't the case, but America needs to put its priorities in order.

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We see time and time again the U.S. helping other countries, allowing people to come here and get an American education and they return to their countries to make war against us, bash us, or stay and perform espionage against us using their newfound technical education.
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Isolationism causes misunderstanding, misunderstanding causes mistrust, mistrust causes hatred, hatred causes violence, violence hurts everyone.

Therefore, Isolationism hurts everyone

Therefore, sister cities helps charlotteans.

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The best dollar you can spend on the defense of the United States is to "educate" people as to what we really are like as a people. Bringing intelligent school kids over here to learn about us is the absolute best way and one of the most inexpensive ways to end hostility towards the USA.

We are barking up the wrong tree to question the value of the sister city program and foreign exchange students coming here. We instead should be looking at the $2.5 billion/week being spent in Iraq. (and not to mention the loss of life)

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