Jacksonville is the host city for the 56th Sister Cities International Annual Conference, which is taking place at the Hyatt Downtown.
It began Thursday and ends Saturday.
Sister Cities International Chairman Brad Cole and President-CEO Mary Kane welcomed about 300 attendees from 20 countries to the conference Thursday.
Jacksonville has eight sister cities: Curitiba, Brazil; Bahia Blanca, Argentina; Changwon City, South Korea; Murmansk, Russia; Nantes, France; Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, South Africa; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Yingkou, China. Those relationships led Sister Cities International to bring the conference to Jacksonville this year.
“Jacksonville has strong sister cities programs and they rolled out the red carpet for us,” said Cole.
The goal of the conference is to connect local leaders and motivated citizens who want to have a positive impact in their community and around the globe.
It is designed to provide an educational and interactive environment for networking, sharing best practices, engaging elected officials, roundtable discussions and gaining knowledge about the latest trends in diplomacy.
Jacksonville has been involved with the sister cities program since 1967. Sister Cities International was created at President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1956 White House conference on citizen diplomacy.
A sister city program is a volunteer group of residents who, with the support of their local elected officials, form long-term relationships with people and organizations in a city abroad.
The organization’s mission is to “promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation — one individual, one community at a time.”
Mayor Alvin Brown will host a welcome reception at 7:30 p.m. today in the atrium of the Wells Fargo Center.
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