City of Lawrence

Lawrence Sister Cities Advisory Board

March 13, 2013 DRAFT minutes

MEMBERS PRESENT:	Jon Josserand, Ken Albrecht, Dennis Christilles, Michael Kennedy, Mark Daly, Jon Niccum, Kelly Herndon, Ione Unruh
MEMBERS ABSENT:	Billy Williams, Curtis Barnhill, Brad Allen, Stacey VanHouten, Kathleen Hodge
STAFF LIAISON PRESENT:	Cynthia Wagner
PUBLIC PRESENT:

Chair Josserand opened the regular monthly meeting in the city commission chambers at City Hall at 5:35 on March 13, 2013.

 Josserand

· Spoke recently with the KU Dean of Music regarding the summer of 2014, and the 30^th year celebration with Eutin.  They were doing some brainstorming for possible ideas.

· Meeting dates for the board for the rest of the year were passed out

· Discussed the cities system for cutting checks to friends groups

· Stated that scholarship money has been allocated

· Sister City Advisory Board budget funding has been requested from the city for 2013

· Minutes approved

· Wants to continue to improve the membership list.  It needs to be improved by increasing the number of paid members – increase the number of contacts

· 2014 Eutin (30^th anniversary) hosting committee needs to be assembled by September/October

FOI (Friends of Iniades) – Christilles

· March 30 meeting for FoI at the Unruh’s house – 2:00 PM

· Donations for the Iniades copier are being taken through the end of March/beginning of April

· City of Lawrence Commissioners Michael Dever, and Bob Schumm will be travelling to Iniades the last week of April

· 8 students and 2 chaperones from Bishop Seabury Academy will travel to Iniades in June.  This isn’t a sister city sponsored trip, rather a private trip for Bishop Seabury Academy.

FOH (Friends of Hiratsuka) – Hilliard

· FoH is looking for 4 households to host 2 students each this summer (2013 – Late July)

March 2013 Update from Friends of Hiratsuka by James Hilliard

1)      All student trip funds have been collected for a total of $24,800.

2)      Scholarship fund amount to be transferred into account is $2,800 for a total of $27,600 to be credit to the Hiratsuka account for purchase of airline tickets and hosting expenses.

3)      Notified by Travel leaders on 3/4/2013 that airline taxes and fuel surcharges have increased our ticket prices $61 since we reserved these seats for a total of $854 for the 14 member delegation. This decreases our anticipated hosting funds by $854.

4)      The next Student Delegation trip preparation meeting is March 30^th- 9:00 am -12:00 noon. Fire station #5 the Jayhawk Room.  Students are busy working on various projects associated with the trip.  Two groups have been formed to tackle their major projects: T-Shirt committee (designs the trip shirt) headed up by Chaperone Blake Bohmann and Entertainment committee (dance and song presentation) headed up by Chaperone Nancy McKee.  Each meeting several students present their power point researched Japanese topic to their fellow travel mates.  This is an attempt to increase their knowledge about Japan prior to their travel.  The presentations contain topics such as fashion, food, music, and religion.

5)      Erika Norikami’s Tuesday evening Language and Culture classes continue.  Next scheduled meeting dates and place:  Meeting time 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

· March 12^th-Firestation #5-Jayhawk Room-

Language Topic: Preposition 1   Culture Topic: Chigirie

· March 19^th –SPRING BREAK NO CLASS

· March 26^th - Fire station #5-Jayhawk Room

Language Topic: “this, it, and that”   Culture Topic: Japanese School

· April 2nd - Fire station #5-Jayhawk Room

Language Topic: adjective   Culture Topic: O-hanami

· 6)      Friends of Hiratsuka –General Open Meeting April 6^th -10:00 am-12:00 noon - Fire station #5-Jayhawk Room

· Purpose of meeting:

a)       Report and Revisit Ted Kuwana’s FOH Ad Hoc Committee activities during 2012 and review 2013 activities list. 

b)      Solicit support and homestays for the 2013 Hiratsuka Delegation that will be visiting Lawrence on July 26^th. 

Friends of Eutin – Albrecht

March 2013 Update from Friends of Eutin by Ken Albrecht

*Accepted invitation from the International Committee of the Lawrence Central Rotary Club to present on 2-20-13.   Jim Morrison, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Coordinator of the Summer Internship Program in Eutin, Germany,  along with Jon Josserand and myself addressed the Rotary Club about the internship program primarily coordinated through the University of Kansas and the Eutin Rotary Club.  Jon presented on Lawrence Sister Cities and updated the Rotary members on all 3 Sister Cities.

*Through arrangements coordinated by Jon Josserand and Jon Niccum, one of the Eutin interns will be working with Ann Niccum at Channel 6.

*Seven students along with Natalie Aaron, Trip Coordinator, will travel to Eutin this summer.  Brogan Ryan will not be able to go and has been replaced by Nico Groth.  Depart on 5-27-13 and return on 6-20-13.

*Arne Scholz is the new coordinating teacher at the Eutin Voss-Gymnasium.  As every year there were many more applicants at the Eutin schools, and the 12 selected feel privileged to participate.

*Summer Language Institute:  Mark Daly is expecting 10 to 12 KU students to participate this summer in Eutin.

*Vocational exchange (internship): KU to send 5 to 7 students to Eutin and Eutin to send up to 5 students to Lawrence.

*Eutin Summer Festival: Expect up to 35 instrumentalists and singers from the KU School of Music to participate.

*Will be establishing a 25th Anniversary Committee of Friends of Eutin to begin planning for the 2014 anniversary.

New Business

· Jon Niccum to work on public relations (website/DVD)

· Josserand to set up a meeting with the city and the Lawrence school board to improve relations.  The hope is to allow more access to Eutin students being educated at the high schools during exchanges.

· Remember to let the chair know when you can’t make a meeting

The meeting was adjourned at 6:35 P.M.