Sister-Cities need to do a much better job promoting itself.

The City of Buffalo represents itself as a city with a large number of Sister Cities, namely :

• Bursa-Yildrim, Turkey

• Changzhou, China

• Dortmund, Germany

• Drohobych, Ukraine

• Horlivka, Ukraine

• Kanazawa-Shi, Japan

• Lille, Nord du Gare, France

• Rzeszow, Poland

• Siena, Italy

• St. Ann, Jamaica

• Tver, Russia

According to the mission statement of of Sister Cities International the goal of this association is that

Sister Cities International helps advance peace and prosperity through cultural, educational, humanitarian, and economic development efforts, and serves as a hub for institutional knowledge and best practices to benefit citizen diplomats. Sister Cities Internationalempowers individual citizens to become diplomats and represent their community and their country in new and meaningful ways.

We also strive to strengthen the sister cities network through strategic institutional partnerships, grants, programs, and support for our members. We motivate and empower private citizens, municipal officials and business leaders to conduct long-term, mutually beneficial, sister city, county or state relationships.

According to the City of Buffalo Sister Cities

Buffalo is proud to have many Sister Cities. These links with various other cities around the world have increased awareness of other cultures and human contact with those in other countries.

The fact that Sister Cities International exists is a wonderful thing.  Conflicts are more easily avoided when people know each other.  Animosities are reduced when you know each other.  Curiosity is address when introduced to other peoples.  Businesses can grow when a relationship between communities are developed.  And you have a place to go should you have an urge to participate in international tourism.

But you can’t do that if you have to search through web pages and Facebook sites that are not up to date.  You can’t do it if the largest media outlet in the area, in this case the Buffalo News  does not publish the activities of the local sister cities groups either because it is not tendered public service announcements or press releases.   I searched through the Buffalo News on-line and found out that other than an unrelated to sister cities chess tournament in Dortmund, Germany there have been no articles written about Buffalo’s sister cites or the organizations.   In an age when the newsprint media is on the decline and loss of relevancy one would think that it would be looking articles of interest to generate interest in its product.  Publishing news stories about activities and opportunities with our  family.

In a rapidly shrinking world.  This wonderful organization needs to really promote itself.  There should be news stories regarding events in the sister communities.  There needs to be public solicitations for business  opportunities here and over there.  And there really needs to be an attempt to develop a transportation link between we and they for the purpose of  developing trade, business development, and tourism.

The people who are involved in the individual communities tend to be small in numbers and very dedicated to their cause.  There numbers are a real shame.  But, the problem may be very simple.  They are out of sight and out of mind.  That really needs to end because information is everything.  As an example, here is a list of the world’s 15 largest beer importers. Buffalo has a small but growing brewery – Flying Bison. It may be owned by F. X. Matt Brewing of Utica, the beer is still produced in Buffalo. Maybe Flying Bison and Matt would like to expand. Maybe they don’t. In any case a look at the list that the fact that Buffalo’s has sister cities in a number of the top 15 indicate there may be an opportunity to export. There may be an importer looking for American specialty beer. Could also be an opportunity to develop a reciprocal relationship partner in the sister nation. To me this is one way the Sister-Cites program is not being fully utilized to open doors to new opportunity.