Stillwater Sister City relationship with Japan revives as delegation readies to go

May 6—The City of Stillwater and Stillwater Schools are preparing to send a citizen and student delegation to Sister City Kameoka, Japan in October, helping to get the Sister Cities exchange programs back on track and happening every year.

"The Sister Cities school program, from the City's perspective, is that we are here to support the student exchange, which was restarted last year, but was dormant for some time," said Stephanie Kinder, community programs manager for Stillwater.

"It's exciting, the exchange this year, because we're entering the 30th anniversary of our Sister City relationship with Kameoka," she said. "It's so wonderful to have the two cities be able to reconnect."

In October of last year, a delegation of seven students and three adults came from Kameoka for a week.

Kameoka, located in the Kyoto Prefecture of Japan, has been a Sister City to Stillwater since 1985.

Stillwater Public Schools Exchange Coordinator Kari Quigley took the last delegation to Japan in 2010, so it is with great anticipation that Stillwater students and others are preparing to pack their bags and passports this year for an official visit covering culture, language, government and education.

A Sister City, county or state relationship is a partnership between two communities in two countries. A partnership is officially recognized when the highest elected officials from both communities put a long-term agreement into place.

Often, Sister Cities have a connection through economic development, are similar-sized and are akin geographically. Or there are a high number of immigrants from one city to the other.

A city can have any number of Sister Cities, and Sister City organizations include representatives from nonprofits to municipal governments, the private sector to civic groups, student exchanges and more.

According to the nonprofit Sister Cities International that helps cities with these partnerships, the relationships "promote peace worldwide on multiple levels" — acting locally, but with global impact.

Sister City groups often help support students with their first opportunity to travel abroad and experience another culture; they create valuable professional experiences and build connections between organizations, and they work to strengthen communities with economic and social benefits to participating cities.

From 1985 to 2010, the exchange program thrived, then, due to financial concerns, it stopped.

In January 2020, the mayor of Kameoka visited Stillwater with a delegation of city officials and discussed reviving the school exchange with Stillwater City officials. Although Stillwater schools were in favor of the proposal, the pandemic postponed the plan until 2023, the News Press reported last year.

"We are sending a few of our Sister City Council Members — a citizen delegation — to support the education program there. It is such a collaboration, though the public schools really do need to get the kudos for this," Kinder said.

"We have been working with Kameoka to identify a delegation of students, who went through a selection and interviews, and Kameoka has agreed to host both the students and citizens," she said.

Traveling with the group will be Jacie Gray, 21, a junior at OSU majoring in Music Industry and Japanese who is pursuing a career in international relations. She is fluent in writing and speaking Japanese and is certified "professional business level" in the language.

"I will be spending the summer in Kameoka conducting an oral history research project with the purpose of preserving the Stillwater-Kameoka Sister City Relations, and I will be working alongside city officials in Kameoka City Hall every day for the duration of my stay, as well as writing articles in English and Japanese for the Kameoka International Times Newspaper about our Sister City relations," Gray said.

Eventually Gray will finish writing a book on the entire Stillwater-Kameoka Sister Cities history.

Gray has been working for the government in Kameoka, Japan already and has a future contract with them after graduation.

"I'm going in through the Japanese government side and will work as the coordinator of international relations," she said.

Gray, from Scurry, Texas, leaves at the end of May and returns to OSU from Japan for her senior year in August, and then she will travel with the delegation there in October to serve the visitors as an interpreter.

For her, the Stillwater-Kameoka connection has been everything.

"It's been really wonderful. I really feel like my purpose at being at OSU is to study the Sister Cities. It has been such an integral part of my life — I would even say it's given me my sense of direction and purpose," she said. "It's been so fruitful with the Sister Cities Councils and falling into this wonderful international relations path."