a world of opportunity.

On April 25, the Fort Worth Youth International youth board met to elect new officers for the 2021-2022 school year. Stay tuned to hear about their new and innovative plans to engage the Fort Worth youth community.

We also thanked and celebrated the outgoing board for their accomplishments during the 2020-2021 school year. Led by President Will Lourcey, the youth board held a dialogue on the evolution of language, volunteered at the Reggio Emilia, Italy 35th anniversary celebration at Coyote Drive-In, learned about holidays all around the world, and hosted an alumni panel.

Thank you to our outgoing board and congratulations to the new board!

Officers

• President – Reshma Niraula, Fort Worth Country Day School
• Vice President – Rob Lourcey, Paschal High School
• Secretary – Katherine Gallardo, Texas Academy of Biomedical Sciences
• Public Relations – Seth Mayhue, Fort Worth Country Day School
• Community Outreach – Leah Peterson, I.M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA
• Fundraising – Caroline Nartz, Timber Creek High School
• Fundraising Deputy – Valdemar Gomez, Nolan Catholic High School
• Cultural Orientation – Gianna Razack, Trinity Valley School

At Large Members

• Evan Bazikov, All Saints Episcopal School
• Chelsey Etta, Fort Worth Country Day School
• Kennis Georges, Birdville High School
• Garin Kelley, Paschal High School
• Girah Lundy-Joseph, McArthur High School
• Noah Reyes, Crowley High School
• Haleema Williams, Texas Academy of Biomedical Sciences

For decades, Sister Cities International has leveraged the power that art has to transform societies and transcend cultural boundaries through the Young Artists and Authors Showcase, or YAAS. The Showcase has given youth worldwide the opportunity to express their vision for a more unified, peaceful world through original art and literature.

Fort Worth Sister Cities International held the local showcase to choose student pieces to be submitted to the worldwide competition.

We want to give a special thanks to our Young Artists and Authors Chair LA Moncrief and her committee for recruiting judges, securing prize money and creating a judging criteria.

We also want to thank our amazing and talented judges Afton Battle, Rachel DeLira, Hilde Horchler, Sheran Keyton, Hillary Shepheard, and Dawn Taft.

Congratulations to the all the artists and authors who were selected and entered into the international competition.

Artists

• 1st Place: Ashley Hernandez, Southwest High School – “Change is Beautiful”
• 2nd Place: Emma Howell, Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts – “Moonflower Hope” 
• 3rd Place: Caya Crum, Paschal High School – “Hope in Future Generations”
• Honorable Mention: Anna Heitz, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School – “Covid 19 and Racism”
• Honorable Mention: Bohumila Jones, I.M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA – “Growing into Wisdom”

Authors

• 1st Place: Evelyn De Long, I.M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA – “Shaped by Hope, Shaped by Hatred”

Photographers

• 1st Place: Marissa Heckman, I.M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA – “Repeat”
• 2nd Place: Juan Contreras, I.M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA – “Munching Gathering”
• 3rd Place: Rob Lourcey, Paschal High School – “Unity and Peace”

Musicians

• 1st place: Curtis Heedley, I.M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA – “It’s Easier If We…”
• 2nd Place: Bela Gomez, Nolan Catholic High School – “Close to You”

If you’re like many people right now, you’re craving personal connections, which is human nature. We were created that way. Relationships are important for our emotional well-being. They create stability, teach us how to be a good friend, and provide us with someone to count on and trust in times of need.

Fort Worth Sister Cities International, while having to curtail international in-person relationship-building this past year, has mastered the art of virtual relationships through a variety of adult and youth programs. This has been the silver lining to the pandemic for us – it gave us the opportunity to be creative and look for other ways to fulfil our mission. If you want to know how we did that, take a look at our year in review below.

We’re very proud of our accomplishments during the pandemic, but are equally excited to be planning in-person international exchanges and experiential educational programs. While our first adult trip will not occur until February 2022 to Toluca, Mexico to see the monarch butterflies, we are setting all the wheels in motion now to, like the butterflies, emerge from our cocoons and take off! Other trips are being planned to Reggio Emilia, Italy in spring 2022 and Nimes, France in fall 2022. Youth trips will again take place during the spring break and summer. Stay tuned for notifications of these trips and come join us as we renew friendships and create new ones around the world.

April is National Volunteer Month and we’ll be honoring and celebrating our volunteers all month. We can never say enough about our volunteers because — they are our life-blood!

Sister Cities has a small staff of four and many people ask us, how do you all do the hundreds of programs and exchanges you do every year involving thousands of people?

We tell them, it’s easy! How? We have amazing volunteers including:

• Students who make friends around the world for Fort Worth and help refugees here at home;
• Home and day hosts who open their hearts and homes to international visitors;
• Educators who, along with their enormous workloads, take the time to encourage their students to participate in this unique opportunity called Sister Cities;
• Donors to the Members Circle of Giving who open up their wallets and support our mission;
• Committee members who plan events, secure donations, help market activities, recruit others to help and are always there when we need them;
• City officials who host guests visiting Fort Worth and travel as official representatives to other countries; and
• Our board of directors who guide us through sometimes difficult decisions, plan for the future and are committed to making a difference here at home and in the rest of the world;

That’s how we do it and we are so thankful for each and every one of you!

The Staff of Fort Worth Sister Cities International

Mae, Joe, Beth and Danielle

HALLELUJAH!  IT’S 2021!

While we are all ready to leave 2020 behind, we shouldn’t forget some of the positive things that have happened like:

• The outpouring of kindness from so many people to those who were suffering
• Time with our families (some maybe too much)!
• Driveway concerts
• Getting bread or cookies from friends
• Living room discos
• The ability to gather with our international friends so easily even if it was via Zoom

We’ve all done some prioritizing this past year and are grateful for the little things we may have taken for granted. Therefore, join us in celebrating this New Year as we look forward to hopefully seeing you here in Fort Worth and around the world.

HAPPY 2021!

Christmas is just around the corner and Santa and his elves have been working tirelessly at the North Pole – using proper protocols for social distancing, of course. While our traditions may be a little different this year due to the pandemic, let’s look back to those days when we were kids when we took making that Christmas wish list seriously.

Do you remember the Sears Catalog? It was huge!!! Must have been 20 lbs. My sisters and I would look through it for weeks trying to pick out the toys we wanted. We would make our lists over and over and over (because Mama said we shouldn’t be greedy ‘cause other kids wanted something, too). We would seal the lists in a special envelope for Santa, put it in the mailbox and watch anxiously to be sure the mailman got our letters. And then, miraculously on Christmas morning, the gifts we wanted so badly were in front of the fireplace just waiting for us. Now, we never got everything we wanted but, by the time Christmas arrived, we were so happy – I think we just forgot.

So, to get you in the spirit (if you’re not already there), and to help you get started with your list, here’s a few we came up with – let’s get the serious ones out of the way first:

• We want this pandemic to end!
• We want to gather safely and celebrate.
• We want to see our friends here and around the world.
• We want to feel the excitement of greeting our friends at the airport.
• We want to experience the butterflies of traveling to a new place and making new friends.
• We want peace in the world!

The excitement on Christmas morning, the long days leading up to Christmas, and the smell of cookies baking are memories many of us share. This year, we’re a little older (okay, maybe some of us a lot) but we’ll still anticipate this wonderful time of the year. 2020 may be a little different for many though and our wish is for all those who have personally borne the brunt of this awful disease, who have lost so much – loved ones, jobs, financial security – to receive the peace brought to us on this day so many years ago.

Wishing you peace and joy this holiday season,

Mae Ferguson
President/CEO

The ever-present “things we are thankful for” lists are everywhere this month, especially during these challenging times and the Fort Worth Sister Cities staff is grateful for many things this Thanksgiving. Our lean and mean team of four are immensely grateful to the people who continue to believe in our mission and serve in various ways to strengthen this organization.

• YOU are the reason we have the number one sister cities program in the nation!
• YOU are the reason for our ability to reach so many youth and involve them in our international education programs.
• YOU are the reason we were able to continue our robust programming virtually in a time when in-person programs and travel were not possible.

Our family of committed and dedicated volunteers, board members, Global Academic Fellows, educators, members and supporters keep us going. We mean it when we say we can’t do it without you.

So, please accept our sincere THANK YOU! We are so thankful to have YOU on our team!

Sincerely,

Your Staff – Mae, Joe, Beth and Danielle