Dragon Boat Festival
The Dragon Boat Festival is a significant holiday in China that stretches back over 2,400 years. It is a symbol of Chinese culture and spirit and is celebrated by teams racing boats in the shape of dragons. The dragon boats can range in size from 30 to 100 feet and can carry 24-48 paddlers (2 paddlers per row). Each year Phoenix Sister Cities participates in the Arizona Dragon Boat Festival and welcomes a team from our sister city of Taipei. In exchange, the City of Taipei invites the City of Phoenix to participate in the Taipei Dragon Boat Festival in May. This type of exchange helps to strengthen the Sister City relationship and helps to build lasting friendships between the people of Phoenix and Taipei.
Chinese Week
An interactive, one-week festival sponsored by Phoenix Sister Cities, in partnership with the Chinese community. The annual Chinese Week offers cultural and educational programs featuring Phoenix sister cities Chengdu and Taipei.
Día De Los Niños
Phoenix Sister Cities members, staff, and Youth Ambassadors operate a booth at the annual children’s day celebration which is organized by the Mexican Cultural Center. Phoenix Sister Cities provides a multi-cultural twist to the celebration of children. PSC’s participation touches the lives of over 1,000 Phoenix elementary children.
French Week
We hold an annual French Week celebration which includes six events over a seven-day period. The festival features a champagne reception, a traditional French dinner, and a showing of the French movie classic “Camille Claudel”. It also includes a fashion show and luncheon. Concluding the week is a Soiree Cabaret with live performances of French songs and culminates with the annual Beaujolais Nouveau Wine Tasting Festival.
The mission of the Phoenix Sister Cities Economic Relations Committee is to develop, maintain and grow productive economic relationships between Phoenix business enterprises and Phoenix’s ten international sister cities. The Economic Relations Committee achieves this by promoting Phoenix, Phoenix Sister Cities and new business relationships that educate local businesses on international trends and practices while strengthening the economic ties that bind Phoenix to the progressive global economy. The Economic Relations Committee (ERC), helps Phoenix Sister Cities (PSC) with economic planning, financial goals and constant review and development of economic relations criteria for evaluation of current and future sister city relationships. The ERC seeks to support local businesses by holding talks and seminars to share information about global markets; most notable is the Global Links Business Luncheon speaker series. The ERC further supports the local business community by conducting local events and visiting government and business representatives from PSC’s sister cities and organizing and leading delegations of Phoenix businesses to the PSC sister cities.
The Economic Relations Committee fulfills its mission by:
Being the Phoenix Sister Cities catalyst in establishing, renewing and or improving economic relationships between our city committees and their respective international counterparts.
Developing and conducting events and programs to educate local and sister city businesses and organizations on the mutual benefits of economic cooperation.
Supporting local businesses by developing and conducting programs to inform them of the means, benefits of, and opportunities for global market participation.
Attracting sister city business enterprises to Phoenix by educating them on the benefits of and opportunities for conducting business in Phoenix.
Participating directly in individual Sister City Committees activities and events to promote economic relations between Phoenix and its sister cities.
Developing economic relations criteria and reporting results to assist PSC in evaluating current and future sister city relationships.
Working directly with the City of Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department to help it achieve its mission.
Phoenix Sister Cities Staff Liaison: Rick Gerrard rick.gerrard@phoenix.gov
Economic Relations Process
The ERC consists of a Chair, appointed by the PSC Board of Directors, ten members, each appointed by the Chair of their respective Sister City Committee (SCC). a PSC staff member, a City of Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department (CEDD) representative and two outside members who are considered experts in the local business and tourism industries.
Each SCC assigns a member of their committee as their representative on the ERC. The SCC economic relations representative works with their SCC to identify potential economic relations projets for consideration. Once potential projects have been identified, the ERC and SCC work together to prepare a buseiness proposal and budget for PSC Board approval. Once a project has been approved and added to the Master Calendar, a task team is formed to develop and implement the project
The ERC holds formal quarterly meetings. The meetings are open to any interested party. Between meetings, the chair and committee members update each other through email and schedule specific project working meetings when necessary.
Public and Private Sector Cooperation
Among the most active programmatic areas of the Phoenix Sister Cities is Municipal and Technical Cooperation. A natural function of international exchange that is city to city, the sharing of information on local government is both popular and highly beneficial to all parties.
A few of the many municipal and technical exchanges the Phoenix Sister Cities has organized include training presentations for police and fire delegations from Hermosillo, Mexico and Chengdu, China; training programs for human resource managers from Chengdu; the exchange of gardeners between the City of Phoenix Parks, Recreation and Library Department and their counterparts in Himeji, Japan; and the sharing of information and expertise between the City of Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department and its counterparts in many of Phoenix’s sister cities.
Municipal and Technical cooperation is not limited to the public sector. Many technical exchanges have taken place in the private sector, including workshops on clinical issues and an adaptive recreation workshop for people with disabilities conducted with Hermosillo, Mexico. Another example is a seminar on accessible building construction for architects from Phoenix and Hermosillo.