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Missouri city finds Carndonagh 'sister' 09.06.11

THE WHEELS have been set in motion to twin the town of Carndonagh with a city in Missouri, USA.
Even though the bid has been quite low key on this side of the Atlantic, a twinning group in St Charles, Missouri, has spotted Carndonagh and thinks the north Inishowen market town would make a perfect suitor.
More than 400 St. Charles students and some 600 German students have already taken part in school exchanges thanks to the proactive board of the St. Charles Sister Cities Program.
After a six year search for an Irish twin, the group eyed Carndonagh and now hope students from both places can begin an exchange programme as early as next year. The St Charles Sister Cities program wrote to Donegal County Council to get the ball rolling and followed that up when board member Marilyn Geery spent a day in Carndonagh at Easter. A letter of intent was signed and all parties now hope the official twinning can go ahead some time in the near future.
Donegal County Council electoral area chairman, Cllr Mickey Doherty yesterday said he had only recently learned about the proposal but thought it was a "positive development".
"We've recently had the announcement that funding has been granted for the Carndonagh Town Park. The twinning proposal with St Charles, Missouri, is a second piece of good news for the town," he said.
"Anything that promotes tourism for Inishowen and brings people together would be welcome."
On the face of it, St Charles and Carndonagh could not be more different - the former has a population of around 66,000, the latter about 2,000.
But the city's twinning body likes the fact that the town has a good community school.
Cllr Mickey Doherty
President of the Irish chapter of the St. Charles Sister Cities Program, Sandi Swift explored Sister Cities International to ascertain which cities weren’t already matched with someone else. She now hopes that students from St Charles will soon be hosted by Carn families and vice versa.
"That’s how you learn from one another. The big focus of our sister cities is student exchanges," Ms Swift told St Charles online news site, st.charles.patch.com.
The Diamond in Carndonagh town centre.
Meanwhile, during Ms Geery's visit, she was invited into a Carndonagh home on Good Friday.
"They cooked us codfish with potatoes. The soup they had, everything was homemade. We sat down to dinner like it was a big, family affair," she told the local news site.
Ms Swift is scheduled to present information about Carndonagh to the St. Charles City Council on Tuesday. It is expected that a delegation from Carndonagh will then visit the Missouri city in September or October to formalize the agreement.
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