Agenda

As we all know, our organisation had a very good start when it was founded in Malaysia and with the following successful workshop in Zurich. But due to the pandemic it was obliged to stop its activities almost entirely during the following two years. This wasn´t only because opportunities and means to travel and to exchange ideas have been limited to a great extend but also because some of the major and important actors and contributors have been forced to fight for their economic survival.

Notwithstanding some pessimistic warnings – for example uttered by the federal minister for health of Germany - these bad times seem to be over now and we may hope that they may not return in autumn and winter.

As we did in relation with the tourism summit cum trade fair show in which framework we are meeting today, we strongly believe that we will be able to start our activities on behalf of the goals and plans of the Twin Cities World Tourism Association again and that we will be able to further our aims within the next months considerably.

But what are these goals and plans of the TCWTA?

First of all, in order to be able to start our activities under the leadership of a new president we need to give our association a legal framework based on the principles and regulations valid in Germany, which means that we will undertake to found a registered nonprofit membership organisation. This will also be a first step to secure a solid financial fundament for our association.

A second step will be to actively encourage new cities and communities to become members of our association in order to find new partners and opportunities for cooperation in a multitude of regions worldwide. At the same time to win new members will help us to create more revenues which will be used to realise our ambitious goals, because the support and development of partnerships which we are aiming at through ideological, financial and also material contributions cannot only be realised on a sound economic fundament.

This is even more the case since we have decided on a number of goals and aims which need manpower and partly also a certain amount of infrastructure to be realised. Some of these goals and plans are:

• Supporting cities, towns and communities to find new and most importantly suitable partners,
• The creation and development of a database which can be used by cities, towns and communities to register themselves as corporations looking for new twin city partnerships. This database should be planned to be a kind of matching tool which will offer the opportunity to describe the municipalities looking for new partnern als well as what they are looking for. This should not only facilitate finding new partners, but also help to place the future partnership on a solid and profitable fundament for both sides.
• The development of model partnership contracts which will help establishing obliging, engaging and in the end sustainable relations as well es the creation and maintenance of relations on all levels of society, thus establishing successful, meaningful and lasting ties between the future partners.
• TCWTA also plans to offer help to define common and mutual plans and goals between existing and new twin city partners.
• TCWTA will try to create, adapt and support new concepts which aim at helping twin cities to secure a higher rate of citizen involvement and participation which in turn will help to keep twin city relations thriving and lively.
• Last but not least we believe that TCWTA should concentrate on the development of concepts which will support and further the appeal and attractiveness of twin city partnerships in a new era characterised by aspects like for instance globalisation, digitalisation and the virtual shortening of distances which had existed in former times.
  This is most important because it is related to the question how twin cities will be able to make twin city relations and contacts more appealing for younger people, teenagers and you adolescents. Twin city relations seem to have to struggle to appeal to younger members of society, because they prefer to use social media for exchanging ideas and establishing contacts with people all over the world, and for young adolescents who expect to visit far away places like for instance Australia or New Zealand, or have done so already, a visit to city or a down in a neighbouring country in Europe might seem rather unalluring and even boring.

After having given you an impression of our overall aims and plans I also want to touch on a very concrete plan we have for the very near future. We plan our next meeting for the 31^st of August or 1^st of September, and we can already tell you that it will take place somewhere at the Aegean Coast of Turkey. Most likely this will take place in the attractive port and trade city of Izmir, but although our discussions with the municipality of Izmir are promising, they did not reach a final stage yet.

Whether this meeting will take place in Izmir or in another one of the beautiful and attractive towns and cities of the Turkish Aegean Coast, we are convinced that we will be able to report on progress we will have made until then concerning at least some of the goals mentioned above.