The Burlington/ Puerto Cabezas Sister City Program continued its mission of promoting understanding between the people of Vermont and the people of Puerto Cabezas on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. Our goal is the exchange of people, as well as exchange of ideas and examination of issues relevant to both communities. 
      Our most significant activities during the past 12 months have been to continue support for URACCAN's community Video Program, to bring Nicaraguan dancers to Vermont, and to co-sponsor and send a Vermont delegation to the International US/Nicaragua Sister Cities Conference in Managua in July 2005. Additionally we are supporting plans to bring a young Nicaraguan man to Vermont next fall to study at the technical school in Essex Junction.
      During September 2004 Dan Higgins and Jane Kramer represented the Sister City Program at an Autonomy Conference in Managua. They then went on to Bilwi and with Ikel Robateau, a former video workshop graduate, offered a video production workshop for nine students who were part of URACCAN's Preparatorio Program. This is a special program in which young people from remote Miskito communities have been invited to live on URACCAN's Kamla campus and work toward both their high school education and university degree. 
      The program will require seven years and this was the first year of the students' residency. The students were bright, enthusiastic, and worked well together as a group. Besides covering the basics of video production the focus of the workshop was on encouraging the students think of ways they could use the medium to express what was important to them, recognizing the character of their cultures and acknowledging the uniqueness of their situation.  
      For their final project the students filmed the story of "Sisimiki", a legend known to them from the Miskito communities. This dramatic epic, described in detail on our web site, is an excellent example of people using video to explore subjects of interest to them. Using video creatively has been one of the primary goals of the Video Project the Sister City Program established at URACCAN in 2000 and we continue to support it with technology and training. We have a DVD available that shows both a documentary of the making of Sisimiki, and a version of Sisimiki itself with English subtitles.
      This past year we explored further exchange of videos as an important way of introducing people of the two sister communities to each other. Laura Navarro, a high school student at Champlain Valley Union who worked with the Sister City Program, organized members of the Spanish class at CVU to videotape and document in Spanish aspects of their lives in Vermont. Laura then edited the tapes into a 25-minute program that has been shown on cable television in both Burlington and Puerto Cabezas.
      In October the Sister City Program brought dance instructor Neko (Duane Watson) and two of his dance students to Vermont where they spent a full ten days visiting schools and libraries, offering multiethnic dance performances, and answering questions about Nicaragua. They went apple picking, visited senior centers, taught a professional class at Johnson State College, and staged spontaneous dance performances wherever they went. As a tour finale they performed at Contois Auditorium in Burlington with many of the Vermont students they had met joining them in dance. Excellent ambassadors they were, and the Sister City Program was glad to be able to send them back with some very large music equipment to continue promoting their dances and teaching. A DVD of their tour has been shown on both Burlington and Puerto Cabezas cable TV and is available from the Sister City Program.
      In July 2005 Vermonters Jane Kramer, Dan Higgins, Robin Lloyd and Charlie Delaney participated in an international US/ Nicaragua Sister Cities Conference in Managua, organized by the Nicaragua Network. It was an exciting forum for hearing how other Sister City Programs are functioning and for getting Nicaraguan perspectives on such issues as CAFTA, indigenous rights, and IMF Restructuring models. 
      Charlie Delaney organized a panel discussing indigenous rights and included on the panel Puerto Cabezas's new mayor, Nancy Elizabeth Henriquez. Mayor Henriquez this spring won election from the Yatama Party. She fought with Miskito combatants during the conflict with the Sandinista military in the 1980s. Robin Lloyds's new video on cooperative farming projects in Nicaragua was shown at the conference. Dan Higgins and Robin co-hosted a panel on the value of video projects and were joined from Bilwi by Margarita Antonio of URACCAN. 
      URACCAN, under Margarita's guidance, in May signed a contract with the Puerto Cabezas cable company to take over the local channel and fill it with locally made programming. The channel now goes under the name "BilwiVision". This is a welcome development in the evolution of URACCAN's video presence and indicates recognition of the value of community access in supporting its autonomy agenda, of opening community dialogue, and of strengthening civil society. The project represents what might be one of the first instances in Nicaragua of providing free community access to television by ordinary citizens.  
      Since taking over the channel Margarita and her volunteers have produced a daily hour-long show every morning, repeating in the late afternoon. The shows include segments with news, interviews, debates, health, variety, women's issues, and sports. There is a question of the day asked of local citizens. There are summaries of news in Miskitu and English/Creole. The group also plans to produce 30 minute programs dedicated to one village every week showing its history, production, people, landscape, myths, and so on. Margarita says her visit to Burlington last year, and especially to Channel 17's Public Access facilities, is what inspired her vision for this project.
      With URACCAN's increased involvement in community video the Sister City Board would like to broaden our support to ensure the sustainability of this vital project. If anyone has suggestions for granting opportunities for community video projects please contact Dan Higgins through the Sister City website. 
      Another project in the works is Charlie Delaney's plan for starting a trade school in Bilwi for young men and women to learn the construction trades. Charlie hopes to enroll a young Miskito man in schooling at Essex Technical Center during fall 2005, the hope being that when he returns home he could then act as director of the future training center in Bilwi. The Sister City Program is helping with airfare for the young man and money for the printing of a brochure that could be used in gathering donations of tools and materials for the project.
      Once again this fall a group of UVM medical students will be researching ways of improving the Nutritional Health of Puerto Cabezas. Their methods will rely primarily on gathering information from published sources although several of the students have expressed interest in visiting Bilwi when the semester ends. As last year, the Sister City Program will offer background information and assistance in helping the students make connections with Nicaraguan counterparts.
      In discussions with leaders in Bilwi we have been told repeatedly that they feel one of the most important activities we can sponsor would be to organize on a regular basis a delegation from Vermont each year that would visit Puerto Cabezas. The best model to date has been David Hutchinson's 2003 Johnson State College delegation in which the trip followed a semester of classroom work preparing students to understand the histories and cultures of Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast. Discussions are underway with Marisha Kazeniac, who has a strong history of organizing educational exchanges, and with Dan Giangreco of the newly formed New Shores Foundation. Burlington College and UVM would be potential institutions to work with.
      In summary, the Sister City Program continues its 21-year history of relationship with the people of Puerto Cabezas. As an organization we function as an umbrella, supporting a wide range of people-to-people contacts. The direction the program takes has always been directed by the interests of the people involved from both communities. We do try to ensure reciprocity in our exchanges. 
      Burlington residents are welcome to attend our irregularly scheduled meetings, and we continuously seek new members representing different aspects of the community. People can contact us through our informative web site, www.uvm.edu/sistercity, and can receive email announcements of meetings by giving us their email address.