Gibraltar Visit from American representatives of Sister Cities International

American representatives of Sister Cities International visited Gibraltar on Thursday the 19th of April for the first time in the association's 62 years history this week, in a bid to foster relationship between the countries.

The event hosted yesterday by the Gibraltar American Chamber of Commerce saw the representative's on a fact finding mission. Forging links between the University of Gibraltar and it's American counterparts were of particular interest and Jane Cahaly from Sister Cities noted, "I'm very excited at trying to get the University of Gibraltar to form links between universities in the US. I work in a consortium of 44 universities in the US and we do International programming so getting to know the folks here in Gibraltar is extremely valuable". Ms Cahaly is currently the Senior consultant for International Programmes with the consortium for Global Education that sees thousands of students participate in overseas study.

Welcoming the representatives were the Minister of Education, John Cortes, and the Minister with responsibility for the university Gilbert Licudi.

Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Gibraltar, Catherine Bachleda and Johann Olivera, Partner at EY and board director at AmCham Gibraltar gave an address at the event yesterday. Johann Olivera highlighted the opportunities on offer for business in the FinTech space with blockchain, crypto funds and ICOs in the newly regulated arena that Gibraltar currently offers to investors. Noting there are 30 new business licenses currently been processed. The synergy between Gibraltar and a California city would make a perfect partnership not only in the education space but also in the FinTech and technology arena. This was further noted by Burga Santiago during the Q&A session. Burga is on the Board of Santa Clara County Sister Cities, which is Silicon Valley.

Mr. Gil Garcia, Honorary Board Member from Sister Cities International Santa Barbara highlighted "What I will take back is information to our Southern California city network and tell them about the opportunities for a possible Sister City Sister City relationship all the area that tie us together and the University is certainly one of them". All the things I have learnt about this community I will just share when networking in California"

Kindly supported by the Ministry of Commerce