The mayor of a Ukrainian city will visit State College on Wednesday for the signing of a memorandum of understanding establishing a “sister city” partnership between the two municipalities.
State College Mayor Ezra Nanes will welcome Nizhyn, Ukraine Mayor Oleksandr Kodola for the signing ceremony at 5:30 p.m. in council chambers at the State College Municipal Building, 243 S. Allen St. The ceremony also can be viewed on Zoom.
Nanes said at Monday night’s council meeting that Kodola is currently on a visit to Washington, D.C. and will be traveling to State College along with representatives from United States Agency for International Development.
“State College is honored to welcome Mayor Kodola and the esteemed delegates from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, D.C.,” Nanes said in a statement. “The people of Nizhyn are our kin, and we want to support them during this time when their nation is under siege. We share a profound aspiration to see the nation of Ukraine triumph over tyranny and to welcome a new era of peace. We look forward to enriching the lives of the people of both of our beloved communities through cultural, economic, educational, agricultural, spiritual, and civic exchanges now and in the future.”
Borough council approved a resolution in March to form an official sister city relationship “as soon as reasonably possibly,” with Nizhyn, a city of 68,000 people in the Chernihiv Region of northern Ukraine and home to Nizhyn Mykola Gogol State University.
The two cities will establish the relationship through Sister Cities International, a nonprofit founded in 1956 that works with nearly 500 member communities “to play an essential part in creating a more peaceful world through people-to-people exchanges and initiatives,” according to its website.
The idea for the partnership came from Svitlana Budzhak-Jones, a native of Ukraine and longtime State College resident, and the Highlands Civic Association, who have been working since last year to raise money to help with critical infrastructure repairs in Nizhyn.
Budzhak-Jones told council in December that they settled on Nizhyn for multiple reasons. It did not experience total damage in the Russian invasion to the extent the State College community could not provide meaningful help. But it did see infrastructure damage that has yet to be fixed, including to a central boiler station that has since been unable to provide heat and hot water.
Though it’s much older than State College, dating back to at least the 12th century, Nizhyn shares similar characteristics with the borough. They have comparable population sizes and are both home to major universities.
The borough plans to facilitate aid to the war-damaged city, though it cannot provide direct taxpayer funds. In the long-term, the sister city relationship aims “to increase a peaceful friendly relationship between people of different nations; expand humanitarian aid; further cultural, economic, and spiritual exchange; extend educational linkages for youth and adults for both cities; and to increase awareness of both cities as centers of growth in the arts, sciences, technology, healthcare, sustainability, sports, and tourism,” according to the memorandum.
“This will allow us to support them during their times of hardship because they are under siege and allow us to enrich our communities mutually through exchanges in the future as that is possible,” Nanes said on Monday.
