Students snag trip to Tempe

How many sausages must you sizzle to get yourself to Arizona?

An awful lot, says Adam Duffin, one of four Hutt students to take advantage of a student exchange scheme with one of the council’s sister cities, the high-technology centre of Tempe in America’s south-west.

Every year the Hutt Sister City Foundation contributes $800 towards four students’ airfares for a five-week homestay in the city of 160,000 people.

Adam says he and his three fellow exchange students have lost count of the number of sausage sizzles and other fundraising events they have held, but they now have the $2000 airfares paid and are saving some extra money.

He says the fundraising work has taught him that the more you put in, the more you get back and that nothing comes for free. The Tempe four fly in on June 5 and the Kiwi four fly out on July 9.

The council signed a sister-city agreement with Tempe in 1981. It also has sister-city relationships with the Japanese city of Minoh and the Chinese cities of Taizhou and Xi’an. They all aim to foster peace through understanding.