AMHERST — A small wind chime displayed outside the town manager’s office in Town Hall serves as a reminder of a visit to Amherst this month by middle school students, their chaperones and the school superintendent from Kanegasaki, Japan.
The delegation from Amherst’s sister city was welcomed to town at a special ceremony. They spent a few days in Amherst and the region, staying with host families, attending classes with their counterparts, visiting Yankee Candle headquarters in South Deerfield and going candlepin bowling in Shelburne Falls.
While this annual visit has persisted, following the establishment in 1989 of the International Friendship Association by Kanegasaki’s former mayor, Norio Takahashi, and Amherst becoming an official sister city in 1993, the town’s participation is continuing to evolve, with uncertainty about the best ways to continue the relationship.
Denise Boyd, a middle school guidance counselor who has organized and recruited host families, said last week that she is stepping aside from her role after 15 years, but is confident that her successor, who is not yet being named, will be able to continue strengthening the partnership.
“People do this because we care about our Japanese sister city, those relationships we’ve cultivated for years,” Boyd said.
Still, even though Superintendent Michael Morris and Town Manager Paul Bockelman, and their predecessors, have given as much support as possible to the sister-city friendship, Boyd said Amherst comes at it from a different place and it is not ingrained culturally.
This has meant that Amherst has not been able to have a formal exchange, with its middle school students last visiting Kanegasaki in 2004.
Part of the reason is a lack of interest, with middle school students not studying or learning about Japan. “We don’t offer Japanese language here,” Boyd said.
Senior Center Director Nancy Pagano, who has been a long-time volunteer with the Kanegasaki Sister City Committee, said the committee needs new blood, and she hopes with a change in Amherst’s form of government that more people may be interested in filling out community action forms to volunteer on it.
“The experience is wonderful,” Pagano said of being on the committee.
Pagano has been able to travel to Kanegasaki and has annually gone to the farewell dinners with the students and their chaperones and seen presentations of gifts, such as the wind chime bell from Kanegasaki and Amherst pins given the Japanese visitors.
Many Amherst residents subscribe to the belief that it is important to bring the world closer together, and the sister city is part of that concept, Pagano said.
“The philosophy of sister cities is to promote peace through understanding,” Pagano said.
Pagano said that the committee continues to explore ways to have an Amherst group of both students and adults head to Kanegasaki soon.
“Kanegasaki is very eager to have it be an exchange,” Pagano said.
Even if there were more interest, another issue is making it equitable for all who might be interested.
If school sponsored, Boyd said money would be needed to offset some of the costs so that not only children from well-off families could go. When exchanges were held between 1999 t0 2004, those depended on a grant from the Freeman Foundation, an organization fostering goodwill between the United States and Asian countries.
Since that money ran out, Boyd said she has explored several avenues for other sources, including from the Japanese consulate in New York, from an environmental program through the Hitchcock Center for the Environment and from a local nonprofit, none of which have panned out.
For Kanegasaki, the sister-city trips are built into the city’s budget and there is a person whose full-time work is cultivating the relationships with Amherst, as well as its sister cities in China and Germany. Amherst has instead depended on people like Boyd and her commitment to the program.
“It enriches me to do this,” Boyd said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.