Schaumburg-India Sister Cities committee formed

Schaumburg this week began taking steps to make its new Sister Cities relationship with Hyderabad, India as real and productive as those it has long enjoyed with Schaumburg, Germany, and Namerikawa, Japan.

Village trustees Tuesday voted to create a four-member subcommittee to oversee the development of the Hyderabad relationship. Similar panels exist for the German and Japanese programs.

Village officials were flattered by the sister city request from Hyderabad’s mayor last fall, made a year after she visited Schaumburg. But they were reluctant to approve a third Sister Cities program unless it was demonstrated that it would be as active as the other two have been, resulting in semiregular cultural exchanges. This week’s creation of the Hyderabad subcommittee shows work on the third program is beginning to move.

Though Schaumburg and Hyderabad are Sister Cities, they’re hardly identical.

Schaumburg was incorporated in 1956 and measures its population in tens of thousands. Hyderabad dates back to 1591 and is home to 8.9 million people.

Yet technology and industry are key to both communities’ economies, and about 19.8 percent of Schaumburg’s residents are of South Asian descent.

“We have a lot to gain, and they probably feel they have a lot to gain as well,” Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson said last fall.