We are working to raise funds for the San Mateo Sister City Association for the San Mateo/Toyonaka Sister City Baseball Exchange event this summer.
This year is a special occasion because it will be the 50 year anniversary of this very special cultural exchange between the Little League communities of San Mateo and Toyonaka, Japan. The last exchange in 2009 had 20 San Mateo boys traveling to Toyonaka; this year there will be 20 Toyonaka boys traveling to San Mateo to play baseball and learn about our community through a variety of cultural events.
Toyonaka is a city of about 400,000 people (about 4x San Mateo's population), and would be considered a suburb of Osaka, the third largest city in Japan after Tokyo and Yokohama.
This will be a great opportunity to show support for the San Mateo community, and to promote the cultural exchange between our two cities. The activities begin on August 13th when the Toyonaka players arrive at SFO, and end on August 19th when they leave. In between will be picnics, ceremonies, the 50th Anniversary Dinner, and, of course, lots of baseball -- 5 games, in fact.
Between now and then, the parents of the players are working to raise funds for these community activities, by working with restaurants in the area to set up fund-raising events. For each restaurant that would like to participate, we set up a day when customers can come to the restaurant, and a percentage of the purchases is donated to the Sister City Association. We promote the event through the Sister City community as well as the larger Little League community in San Mateo, to bring the customers in.
In 2011, the total amount brought in was about $1000 from six different restaurants in the area. We hope to improve on this year, and count on your support for this very important community event.
For more information, see http://smsistercity.blogspot.com/ as well as https://www.facebook.com/smsistercity.
