Lynnwood city officials held a virtual ceremony last week to honor the city’s new friendship city — Chilpancingo, located in Mexico.
Last Monday, Mayor Nicola Smith and Lynnwood City Councilmember Julieta Altamirano-Crosby participated in a virtual Friendship City Ceremony with elected officials from the the state of Guerrero, Mexico including Gov. Hector Astudillo Flores and Chilpancingo Council Member Ana Lilia Leyva Sotelo. A proclamation was also issued to formalize the relationship.
“Lynnwood is a diverse city,” Smith said. “In Lynnwood, Latinx community members account for approximately 15% of our population, and we are so glad that they have chosen to call Lynnwood home.”
With this Friendship City relationship, Smith said she hopes to create an open exchange of information, economics, arts, tourism and more with Chilpancingo.
Friendship City relationships are similar to the Sister City program, but have a more limited scope. Additionally, friendship cities relationships are a mayor-to-mayor agreements whereas Sister City relationships require the city council’s approval. Like the Sister City program, Friendship City relationships typically involve participating in annual exchanges.
In 2016, Lynnwood entered into a Sister City agreement with Damyang, South Korea. Since, the program has sponsored student exchanges involving high school students from Damyang visiting Lynnwood. In 2019, Lynnwood High School students traveled to South Korea.
Additionally, Chilpancingo is Altamirano-Crosby’s hometown. She traveled to Mexico as a representative for the city during the ceremony.
“This Friendship City relationship promotes cooperation between both cities, and also builds and makes known our multicultural legacy,” Altamirano-Crosby said. “This relationship will be a first approach to share, learn and value our cultural differences.”
–By Cody Sexton
When you say tourism is the Lynnwood City council or some representative hoping for a trip paid for by tax payers? I am not really understanding why resources are being wasted on programs like this when the rest of us are still under lockdown?
Hello,
One of the goals of Sister City and Friendship City relationships is to promote tourism to our great city. We want Lynnwood to be viewed as a wonderful place to live and visit! As far as exchanges, these are paid for with private funds contributed by members of local diversity organizations, the non-profit Lynnwood Sister Cities Association or by visitors using their private funds.
Due to COVID-19 we do not have any exchanges currently planned, but we are hopeful that next year we can welcome an educational exchange of students and teachers from Chilpancingo.
Julie Moore, Public Affairs Officer, City of Lynnwood
The pop up TED YouTube video is annoying! It pops up every time you change page…people really don’t want to deal with that.
It’s a short term promotion and comment noted about limiting it to the home page. We’ve asked about it.