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Global Reach
spectively. As with most sister city links, these primarily involve a
combination of charitable fundraising, visits by municipal delegations
in both directions, student exchanges, and community cultural events.
The San Jose-Pune sister city program has been the most active
since it was established in 1992 through the efforts of finance executive
Vijay Pendse, a native of Pune, a city of some 4.5 million
people in the state of Maharashtra near India’s central west coast.
Pune is home to 107 universities and scientific research institutes,
graduating 87,000 students each year, mainly in engineering, medicine
and science. It is also an automotive manufacturing center.
San Jose has hosted four technology symposia since 1996, inviting
engineers and managers from Pune to hear presentations by Silicon
Valley firms such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Siemens. It has arranged
student and teacher exchanges with Pune University and
other schools; raised funds and worked with the Rotary Club in Pune
to provide vaccinations for low-income children and build the fiveacre
Mutha River Park; donated prosthetic limbs for children with
polio; and organized book drives and a music program.
San Jose’s latest sister city project with Pune has created a communication
link between students at St. Francis High School in San
Jose and the Mahatma Rajguru High School (HRHS), an all-girls
school in Pune. The project is intended to help the economically
disadvantaged HRHS girls to stay in school, through student-tostudent
contact and financial help for their families.
Vijayawada, a city of approximately 1 million in Andhra Pradesh
near India’s eastern coast, is one of five Modesto sister cities. In
April 2007, Modesto held an Indian dinner/concert program to raise
funds for the SKCV (Sri Krishna Chaitanya Vidyavihara) Children’s
Trust, which provides outreach, education, training, and night
rescue centers for homeless youth in Vijayawada.
Union City’s relationship with Jalandhar—a Punjabi manufacturing
city of some 700,000 near India’s border with Pakistan, known for
making leather goods and surgical tools—is relatively inactive at
this time. An annual festival initially raised money to host a visiting
delegation from each of Union City’s four sister cities (Santa
Rosalia, Mexico; Pasay City, Philippines; Chiang Rai, Thailand and
Jalandhar), but priority has more recently been shifted to providing
each one in turn with aid.
Fremont, with its large Indian population, is linked to Jaipur, a
historic city in the state of Rajasthan with a growing technology
presence. Together with the Rajasthan Association of North America
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