By Milton M. Reigelman

Eight students from local high schools have been selected as student ambassadors for this summer’s exchange with Carrickfergus, Danville’s Sister City in Northern Ireland. The students will spend a week living with the Irish family of their exchange partner. Their Irish partner will then spend a week living with their exchange family in Danville.

 

On June 30th Lia Da Costa, Maddie Fields, Alex Finke, Adeline Germann, Ellen Gnann, Anders Petkus, Irish Spears, and Maya Wade will travel to Ireland with their chaperones, Lela and Logan Germann. While in Ireland they will visit the Giant’s Causeway at the northern tip of the island, the Titanic Museum in nearby Belfast, and the 12th-century Castle in Carrickfergus, the best example of Norman architecture extant.

 

On July 10th , soon after the Irish students arrive in Danville, local officials and Sister Cities friends and supporters will host a “Welcome to Kentucky” event in the Reading Room of the Boyle County Public Library.

 

The Danville Sister Cities Commission was founded in 1989 and officially twinned with Carrickfergus in 2007. Last May the Commission sponsored its fifth trip to Ireland for local citizens and its second high-school exchange. It has also sponsored exchanges of musicians, artists, cultural ambassadors, librarians and soccer and football teams.

 

In 2018 Dee Craig, a famous Irish muralist, worked with local students and adults to create one of Danville’s first murals, the “Diversitea” mural on Elmwood Inn Fine Teas. Earlier the SC Commission and Pioneer Playhouse co-sponsored an Irish Week in connection with the Playhouse’s first production of a popular play about an exchange between Danville and Carrickfergus Mayors, written by Liz Orndorff after she had spent a month in Carrickfergus as an exchange artist.