Partner cities: digital networking opens up many new opportunities
RHEINE. The city of Rheine is breaking new ground in digital networking with its twin towns Bernburg, Borne, Leiria and Trakai. On the website www.friendsineurope.com, people in the five cities have the opportunity to find out more about each other. Translation services help to ensure that language does not have to be an obstacle. Mayor Dr Peter Lüttmann and the mayors of the twin towns opened the website to the general public in a video conference on Wednesday, 26 January – and toasted the success of this ambitious project with a glass of champagne from afar.
Friendsineurope.com is virtually a result of the restrictions that have been in place for two years because of the Corona pandemic. Because almost all meetings had to be cancelled, the board of the Rhein Town Twinning Association came up with the idea of publishing information about important developments in the twin towns on a digital platform, thus not only making information about what is happening easily accessible to everyone, but also perpetuating mutual interest. “Even if we were not allowed to see each other and had to stop the youth exchange altogether, for example, we at least wanted to make sure that every citizen could find out about important things in the twin towns,” explained Reiner Wellmann, chairman of the Rhein Town Twinning Association. After the presentation, the project also met with enthusiastic approval in the twin towns because of the many new possibilities. And so in future the site will be constantly updated with information directly from all five twin towns.
The mayors of the participating cities expressed their enthusiasm about the new communication platform on Wednesday. “The project is of great importance for getting to know each other better between Bernburg, Borne, Trakai, Leiria and Rheine. It will serve to make our citizenries know more about each other, creating new opportunities for future projects,” said Leiria’s Mayor Goncalo Lopes. Trakai’s mayor Andrius Satevicius was also enthusiastic: “I hope that this project will further improve communication between all of us and help to spread information. You already know that Trakai is celebrating its 700th anniversary this year. I think this website and this project is a great birthday present for us!” Bernburg’s future mayor, Dr Silvia Ristow, spoke of a “new quality of town twinning work”. She wished the project great success. She said that the town of Bernburg would publicise the new website in the town in the coming days and weeks. “I congratulate us all,” said Borne Mayor Jan Pierik. He thanked the Rheine Town Twinning Association for the intensive work on the website. In Borne, they are now looking forward to looking at the site every day.
The technical implementation was made possible thanks to generous support from the Stadtwerke für Rheine, the Stadtsparkasse Rheine and the NRW European Ministry. “We are very grateful to our town twinning association for this initiative and the intensive work in implementing it” said Mayor Peter Lüttmann. If successful, “friendsineurope.com” could also develop into a model project for many other municipalities and districts. Dr Stephan Holthoff-Pförtner, NRW Minister for Europe, is also following the Rhein model project with great interest and wished it every success.
Local news is the core of friendsineurope.com. In addition, there is a lot of general information about the twin towns, but also current date notices as well as a documentation of the school exchange projects over the years. “And when youth ambassadors visit the twin towns in the future, they will probably report on their experiences in a video diary on friendsineurope.com,” Lüttmann and Wellmann explained the new and contemporary possibilities.
In a further development stage, it is planned that the young people at the schools can use the new website to do comparative work on historical, economic or social topics. And so the Rhein model project www.friendsineurope.com will also make it possible in future for young people from two or three twin towns, for example, to work on cross-border topics, specialised papers or projects. The town twinning association sees considerable potential here. It will accompany this process constructively and with suggestions.
Stolz ist man im Städtepartnerschaftsverein auf das Logo der neuen Seite, das von der Kommunikationsagentur expect more entwickelt wurde, die den Verein auch bei der weiteren Umsetzung begleitete. „Dieses wunderbare Logo beschreibt auf sehr sympathische Weise, was wir tun, wofür wir arbeiten – und was nach unserer Überzeugung in der komplexen Weltordnung unsere Chance ist: die Zusammenarbeit in einem vereinten Europa“, betont Wellmann abschließend.