annualreport2012

The Burlington/ Puerto Cabezas Sister City Program

15 Beech Street, Burlington, VT 05404
www.uvm.edu/sistercity

2012 ANNUAL REPORT TO THE CITY OF BURLINGTON

2012 Board Members:
        Tina Escaja, Dan Higgins, David Hutchinson, Richard Kemp, Jane Kramer, Marisha Kazeniac,
        Sarah Luneau, Sam Mitchell, Ryane Severin

    The Burlington/ Puerto Cabezas Sister City Program continues to promote interaction between residents of Vermont and residents of Puerto Cabezas, a municipality on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. 2012 marks the twenty-eighth anniversary of the program. While strategies have changed over the years, our focus continues to be the creation of partnerships between like-minded groups and individuals in Vermont and Nicaragua.

    DELEGATION 2012
    In February, board members Dan Higgins and Jane Kramer traveled to Bilwi, joined by Marisha Kazeniac and Sam Mitchell, two board members for whom it was their first visit. Marisha, who is director of the Vermont Caribbean Institute, made contact with a number of community leaders and educational organizations, sharing ideas and proposing projects they might collaborate on in the future. Sam, a UVM senior who is writing his thesis on Miskitu poetry, spent much of his time doing research in the library at URACCAN and interviewing Miskitu poets such as scholar/poet Ana Rosa Fagoth.

    VIDEO PROJECT
    As in past years, when Dan and Jane travel to Bilwi they look for a group to work with on a video project. This year they helped young people at CEDEHCA, a youth training organization, produce a TV spot about an issue the young people felt most impacted their lives. The promo, spoken in the four languages heard in Bilwi (Miskitu, Mayagna, Spanish and English), runs three minutes long and invites other young people in the region to join the group in rejecting violence. Besides being shown on local cable TV, the video is viewable on the Internet.
    <http://blip.tv/winooskivision-cafe/anti-violence-promo-nicaragua-6023670>

    COCAL SCHOOL UPDATE
    During our Bilwi visit in 2011, we observed the distribution of 3000 green and white laptop computers to elementary students in the public school system. These computers were complete with cameras and Internet capability and suggested, to a number of us, that these might offer a unique opportunity to build on the sister city relationship. We envisioned projects that might connect students at the Barrio Cocal School with students in Burlington through an email exchange of arts, images, and stories. Visiting the Cocal School this February, we discovered that none of the teachers used email and most had no idea what email was. After talking with the teachers, and hearing their enthusiasm for the project, our long time partner Dixie Lee arranged a 4 hour email workshop at which, before it was over, the instructor had supervised each teacher opening his or her own email account. How useful those connections will be remains to be seen.
    Miss Darling, the principal of the Cocal School, requested additional shelving be put in the cabinets we had had built the year before, and we hired the same carpenter as last year to do the job. We also packed grease in the brackets of the playground swings, greatly cutting back on the noise.

CREOLE CULTURE CENTER
With the help of a UNESCO grant, a new Creole culture house was built in Bilwi in 2012, celebrating the contributions of the black African descendents on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast. Dixie Lee was interviewing long time residents whose livelihood was based on traditional Creole practices and Dan was able to go with him, making photographs for the Culture house of the extraordinary group of octogenarians that included a healer, a music teacher, a baker, a cook, a barber, a furniture maker, and a midwife.

WHEELCHAIR UPDATE
During the spring of 2012 Rick Schwag (Cuba Medical Transport) arranged for another shipment of plastic wheelchairs to be sent to Nicaragua, arriving last March at a port on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast. 300 chairs were designated for the Atlantic Coast, with 100 earmarked for Puerto Cabezas. The cost of transporting the 100 chairs to “Port” was $900, which the sister city program raised through various contributions. The delivery of the chairs is again being overseen by Martha Downs, Director of ODISRAAN and vice Mayor of Port. We have engaged Julio Bordas, Bilwi videographer extraordinaire, to document delivery of the chairs to remote coastal communities as a way of promoting the wheelchair project in the future.

OUTREACH
During 2011, we promoted the sister city program using video, public displays, and our web site, <http://www.uvm.edu/sistercity>. Our web site gets many inquiries for information about Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast as well as requests for the various DVDs available through the site, many documenting traditions and customs of the region. Last spring we participated in joint meetings with Burlington’s other sister city programs, a collaborative effort that has resulted in a new combined web site listing for all of Burlington’s International relationships.
In October Dan Higgins will be exhibiting a group of Bilwi photographs at Burlington’s North End Gallery, with an opening reception on October 5th. On October 18th, as a prelude for the Vermont International Film Festival, there will be a showing at that gallery of videos representing each of Burlington’s sister cities. Margarita Antonio, who for many years has been involved in both radio and TV projects in Bilwi, will be visiting Burlington this October talking with various groups about her work. Plans are being discussed for collaboration between CEDEHCA and the youth advisory group CHIPS in Essex Junction, and as part of our ongoing arts collaborations we are exploring ways we might connect musicians in Bilwi with musicians in Vermont.

IN SUMMARY
While the sister city board is represented by a small core of enthusiastic members, we function best as an umbrella organization, networking with other groups and institutions. We have collaborated with URACCAN, CEDEHCA, Johnson College, VT Council on World Affairs, the Center for Media and Democracy, UVM Latin Studies, CCTV, and the CORE program at Champlain College.
Our irregularly scheduled food-provided meetings take place at board member Jane Kramer’s house, 15 Beech Street, in Burlington. We invite participation from any Vermonters who’d like to get involved with this unique relationship between our communities. We can be reached through our web site. Board members are chosen among those attending our Annual Meeting in October. We appreciate the continued official support of the city of Burlington and look forward to continuing to provide Burlington residents with the unique opportunity of exploring global issues through the perspectives of the sister city relationship.