After 3-year hiatus, Pensacola sister city exchange back to celebrate 30 years
After a three-year hiatus because of COVID-19, Pensacola and its Japanese sister city, Gero, have resumed student exchange visits just in time to mark the program's 30th anniversary.
The Pensacola-Gero Exchange Program was started in 1993 when a superintendent of what was then Hagiwara, Japan, and an American educator teaching English in Japan came to Pensacola with the goal of creating an exchange program relationship between the cities.
The program is part of the larger Sister Cities International program. Groups of students visit their respective sister city, stay with host families, and teach and learn about one another's cultures through games, language and activities.
Laverne Baker, treasurer of Japan-America Society of Northwest Florida, said she cherishes how much love is generated between host families and the exchange students every year.
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“It's just beautiful to watch that exchange of humaneness between each other,” Baker said. “It doesn't matter if you speak, if you can smile, you're thoughtful, polite, it just grows and it’s beautiful to watch.”
Gero last week sent 15 eighth-grade students to spend a week in Pensacola to learn about the history, culture and language of the United States.
Mirei Kusakabe was one of the students, and during her first visit to the United States she went to the beach and saw dolphins, visited Brown Barge Middle School and was even able to present a gift to Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves.
“I enjoyed Brown-Barge Middle School. We showed them Japanese culture, so in my case, calligraphy,” Kusakabe said. “It is difficult to explain but I enjoyed it.”
The exchange program started with the University of West Florida as a conduit and eventually Brown-Barge was incorporated as a magnet middle school to work with junior high schools in Japan to facilitate student exchanges.
Hagiwara eventually joined with several other small villages and joined the larger city of Gero in that area of Japan, and continued the sister city relationship with Pensacola.
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During their week in Pensacola, students from Gero visited places like UWF, the walking trail around Blue Wahoos Stadium, Historic Pensacola Village and City Hall.
Even during the gap between the last student visit in 2019, Brown-Barge and Gero continued to send videos and gifts to each other to keep the spirit of the exchange program alive.
During Hurricane Ivan, Gero actually sent funds to help Pensacola recover and Pensacola has also sent funds to help Gero recover during floods.
Tyler Bryant, a Japanese-language teacher at Brown-Barge Middle School, watches over the program in Brown Barge and also visited Gero when he himself was a middle school student at the school.
He said the program benefits both countries since many local students may have never left Pensacola and many Gero students have never left their mountainous and countryside area. The students learn a valuable skill because even though they only speak a limited amount of their sister city's language, they can still communicate and forge friendships.
“Those friendships and those bonds are created with very limited proficiency in any language, but they're there. So students learn how to communicate using different means and learn how to create common ground with people from different cultures and backgrounds,” Bryant said. “And I think it really does help tear down any types of biases or barriers that they may have in students and really open up their eyes to how big of a global world we live in."
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola and sister city Gero Japan resume student exchange program
