The City of Santa Barbara was awarded The Sister Cities International Innovation in Business, Trade, and Professional Exchange 2025 Award for cities with a population of 25,001 to 100,000, which was announced at the SCI Annual Awards Program showcasing the achievements of sister cities programs, offering international recognition for their contribution to the citizen diplomacy movement.
Established in 1962, Sister Cities International created this program to honor the outstanding sister city initiatives.
Recipients of the 2025 Annual Awards were announced at the SCI Awards Ceremony and Diplomatic Dinner in Fort Worth Texas on July 22, held during the Summer Leadership meeting.
The keynote speaker for the 2025 Awards Diplomatic Dinner was Mary Jean Eisenhower, proud granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the international founder of Sister Cities International, an organization focused on people-to-people diplomacy.
Sister Cities International President and CEO Ricki R. Garrett and SCI Board Chair Carlo Capua presented awards to 2025 winners in attendees.
The Sister Cities Brand Marketing Campaign winning proposal for City of Santa Barbara was created and implemented by Bonnie Carroll with assistance from Santa Barbara SCI member volunteers and was entered for award consideration by Carroll, an SCI Sister Cities Board member and three-year member of Santa Barbara Puerto Vallarta Sister Cities Board of Directors.
City of Santa Barbara won the prestigious 2025 Annual Award in recognition of their outstanding work in 2024 as best in its category of Innovation in Business, Trade, and Professional Exchange 2025 for cities with a population of 25,001 to 100,000 to advance the goals and mission of Sister Cities International, while focusing on the importance of people-to-people diplomacy.
Mayor Randy Rowse met with Bonnie Carroll to accept the 2025 Sister Cities International Business, Trade and Professional exchange winning award. The Sister Cities Award will be on display with countless other SCI gifts and awards in Mayor’s office.
The kind support of area business and city partners including George Lilly SJL, Boone Graphics, Alicia Sorkin & Sebastian Aldana SB/PV, Visit Santa Barbara, Grace Fisher Clubhouse, Newquist-Nolan Quittner Santa Barbara, Friends of City of Santa Barbara Library-Michael Towbes Library Plaza, and City of Santa Barbara Farmer’s Market helped make 2025 an award-winning year for Sister Cities of Santa Barbara.
“As Mayor of the City of Santa Barbara I am particularly pleased with the performance as well as the continued dedication of our Sister Cities groups. I think we have set a standard that is enviable worldwide, and we have fabulous relationships with all our sister cities. Thank you very much for this award, and it will be displayed prominently in City Hall,” said Mayor Rowse.
Kudos to Mayor Rowse, who attends SCI City Hall meetings, the board liaison Councilman Oscar Gutierrez, Holly Perea, Assistant to the Mayor, and volunteer Linda Gunther for their ongoing support of the City of Santa Barbara Sister Cities Committees including Kotor, Montenegro, Patras, Greece, Weihai, China, Toba, Japan, Miraflores, Peru and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
“It’s an honor to be recognized by Sister Cities International for the 2025 Best Innovation in Business, Trade, and Professional Exchange proposal and Annual Award on behalf of all our members who work so hard to make the City of Santa Barara SCI programs successful, along with our amazing SCI partners throughout the world. They say it takes a village, or in this case a great city, to shine a light on the importance of creating winning member relationships with good planning and clear communication. We are all grateful for this recognition and look forward to participating again in 2026,” said Carroll.
shares new brochures and information at Montecito Farmer’s Market in 2024.
The list of 2025 winners of all eight Sister Cities International categories and three special individual honors is available at www.sistercities.org. Sister Cities International serves as the national membership organization for 465 U.S. communities with over 1,800 partnerships in more than 138 countries on six continents. For City of Santa Barbara Sister Cities membership information please visit www.santabarbara.gov.
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Congrats! Now can you all focus on mending the relationship with Dingle, Ireland?
Really? No one cares about Dingle. lol.
BASIC – I bet the people of Dingle care about Dingle. I bet plenty others here do too. Know why? Because we’re not all soft-headed psychopaths.
You should really try reading your comments out loud to someone with a brain before you post them.
I think Dingle dropped SB as a sister city, so they would need to mend the relationship. My understanding is that about ten years ago or so, a group of writers from Santa Barbara (possibly a writing class from UCSB) were visiting Dingle and did not treat the local “dignitaries” respectfully. This could be completely wrong, but having spent time in Dingle and Ireland a number of times, I cannot imagine that they’d be so petty. Maybe someone on Edhat has more accurate info.
Inaccurate. A group of people from Santa Barbara sister cities went to Dingle and there was some honest miscommunication about where to meet for dinner or an event or something, and they Santa Barbara’s became egotistically offended and severed the relationship. The Irish did not.
We certainly can rely on Bends Knees for inaccurate information.
Last time sister cities was mentioned the comments were sidetracked like now with comments about Dingle, mostly anonymous. A quick check with the sister cities board through their contact information online informed me that the Dingle Santa Barbara sister cityship dissolved in 2020 because neither side met minimum requirements to keep the relationship going. The SB side had no board president and not enough committee members. I also asked how many applications had come in since 2020 to establish a new Dingle sisterhood, and how many of those had been denied or were still in progress. I was told no such applications have been submitted since the dissolution five years ago. So for all the bluster, blame, and blather in these comment sections none of these anonymous people who appear to passionately want a Dingle relationship have done any work to make it happen.
Back to the focus of this article, congrats to all on the award.
You must have forgotten this piece: https://www.independent.com/2020/04/29/santa-barbara-city-council-unwittingly-declares-war-on-irish-seaport/
Or is journalism considered bluster, blame, and blather?
That’s exactly what that article is: an opinion piece because the author likes Ireland. The folks from Ireland appear upset they’re going to lose business. But the article itself states there were issues with the committee. Also, I don’t see anything in the article to suggest that the author, Nick Welsh, or anyone else submitted an application to form a new Dingle SB committee. Again if there’s so much interest why hasn’t anyone taken the initiative to resurrect it? According to the sister cities board that’s what happened previously, many said they liked the idea of that relationship but they couldn’t meet the minimum number of committee members or fill the seats on its board. Instead of throwing shade based on an opinion piece, if you’re really that invested in it, spearhead a group of Dingle enthusiasts and submit an application. Otherwise move on and quit trolling every sister city article with mentions about Dingle when you have no intention to do anything about it.
Lose business??? In Ireland?? hahaha. Is there any possibility for you that the veteran journalist of Santa Barbara got it right? Perhaps this small Irish town was caught off guard when SB cancelled the sister city relationship without warning them? Surprised we haven’t asked Dingle for our Bud Bottoms dolphin statue back.
Perhaps stop being upset that no one has joined sister cities to foster this relationship and focus more on why Dingle feels so slighted and why SB acted the way it did.
Pot, meet kettle. I’m not upset at all, just did a little research and was surprised that most of the anonymous trolling comments about Dingle are unfounded. Yours are based on an opinion piece. By all means continue going apoplectic about it all and derailing this article’s comment section while doing absolutely nothing to create the relationship you seem so passionate about.
Okay, so it poets from UCSB who were the ones who went to the wrong pub to read their words and no one was there….because they were at another pub! Not sure how things could get so mixed up in a town that is about four or five square blocks. If I went to the wrong place I certainly wouldn’t come back to SB and have a “sister city” removed. Just wrong.