Celebrating the Sister City relationship between Baltimore, Maryland and Ashkelon, Israel
Last Monday night, June 13, Chimes was honored to play host to a Sister City event with the Mayors of Ashkelon and Baltimore. Both Mayors exchanged gifts and spent time with our other guests, people from the Associated, various branches of the Maryland Government, groups with interest in promoting business and community involvement in Israel as well as Chimes staff members. Over 50 people attended the event and had an enjoyable evening in the courtyard at the Intervals Building, 4814 Seton Drive.
Joining us for the event from our Israel staff was Jorge Zimmermann the Executive Director in Israel as well as Esther Sharon, Resource Development Director for Chimes Israel.
To view the brief article and photo spread from the Baltimore Jewish Times, please click on this link Celebrating Sisters.
We were both surprised and pleased that the Mayor of Ashkelon made a commitment to help with creating a better environment for our program in his city during his speech and followed up with us the next day. Today that program exists in a small two story suburban home with a steep flight of stairs and insufficient kitchen and bathroom space to work comfortably with 24 children with special needs. This commitment will allow us to address this need in the future.
We will be following up this event shortly with a follow up letter to both those in attendance and those who were invited but could not join us. We hope we can get them engaged and willing to help support programs such as the reconstruction of Tiybe’s facility already underway, an expansion to our space in Modiin, and ultimately, creation of better space in Ashkelon.
A trip to Israel is being planned to commemorate Chimes Israel’s 20th anniversary sometime this winter. This trip will be a joint activity with ANCOR; more on that as plans firm up.
