GREENFIELD – After three years, travel will resume to Greenfield’s sister city in Japan and applications are open to eligible travelers.
Sister Cities of Greenfield hasn’t been able to organize a trip to Kakuda, Japan since 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization is preparing for its next journey in June 2023.
Greenfield established its sister-city relationship with Kakuda in 1990. Since then, Sister Cities of Greenfield has facilitated dozens of trips to the city’s counterpart in Japan and has also welcomed Japanese residents to Greenfield over the years.
Applications are available to current and former eighth- through 11th-grade students from Greenfield-Central schools.
Adults must meet the following criteria in order to apply to be a chaperone: Be an employee of the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation, be employed by Hitachi Astemo, be an employee of the city of Greenfield, be a current Sister Cities of Greenfield board member, or be a former host family adult age 22 or older.
Eligible travelers can apply at sistercitiesofgreenfield.org. Applications are due Dec. 31, 2022.
Lyndi Grubb, president of Sister Cities of Greenfield, said the cost to travel is $850.
“This is really minimal considering travel costs on their own can be $3,500 and up, so it could be quite expensive,” she said. “This is really a nominal cost for students to be able to have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Grubb is excited to start trips back up again.
“The heart of our program is sending students and seeing the connections they make with students over there, and host families, and the Japanese community, and having them come here and see the same connections being made with citizens of Greenfield,” she said.
Sister Cities of Greenfield is able to keep travel costs down thanks to financial support from the city of Greenfield and Hitachi Astemo, a Japanese company with a plant in Greenfield that makes automotive parts. The sister cities organization has regular fundraisers as well.
Travelers are paired with host families in Kakuda, many of whom don’t understand much English.
“It’s just really fun to see how everyone learns to communicate with each other, and it’s never been a problem – communication,” Grubb said. “There are so many ways to communicate other than spoken language.”
Travelers also visit schools and a museum as well as historical sites and other local destinations. They meet with Kakuda city officials and attend a welcome dinner and farewell dinner too. After their approximately 10-day stay in Kakuda is finished, they spend two days in Tokyo, one of the largest cities in the world.
“It’s a great way for students in our community to see a different culture, experience it in an immersive way, and they get to learn that just because a culture is different, that doesn’t mean that we’re not all the same,” Grubb said.
Grubb traveled as a student through the program decades ago and still communicates with her host family.
“The opportunity to develop a long-distance connection with a host family and friends that are going to last you a lifetime – that’s something you don’t get from just a trip abroad,” she said. “It’s that immersive piece of being with a host family and developing those relationships in a short amount of time that truly makes it a special, special trip.”
Attendees of the 2023 trip will be joined by Grubb as well as Greenfield Mayor Chuck Fewell, city attorney Gregg Morelock and city human resources representative Mitch Ripley.
Grant Pfifer, vice president of Sister Cities of Greenfield, packed six years of the Japanese language into his four years as a student at Franklin Community High School and traveled to the country through a sister-school relationship.
“Any chance you get to travel, you realize it’s a big world out there,” Pfifer said. “…At the end of the day, we’re all people, and the differences that you see in cultures and language – they’re interesting. They can seem like a novelty, not in a way that trivializes, just in a way that gets your attention, as an outsider looking in on something different from what you grew up with.”
He encourages eligible travelers to submit applications.
“If you’re worried about the money piece of it, at least apply, and that conversation can come later,” he said.
Travel will resume from Kakuda to Greenfield as well, and eight Japanese students with two chaperones are slated to visit in August 2023.
Donations to Sister Cities of Greenfield can be contributed online by visiting paypal.com/fundraiser/hub and entering Sister Cities of Greenfield. Contributions can also be made by check payable to Sister Cities of Greenfield, 10 S. State St., Greenfield, IN 46140. The organization is participating in Giving Tuesday on Nov. 29 as well, a global generosity movement.
