Livingston County leads in ‘soft diplomacy’

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So our jobs are being exported overseas and it seems we are making enemies around the world faster than we can kill them. Although we live in the greatest democracy the world has ever known, our future appears less than certain. This column is dedicated to creative thinking and personal responsibility, but when it comes to foreign policy what can we do besides sit around the coffee shop and complain about the government, lost jobs and never ending wars?

There are folks among us in Livingston County who do have a creative approach to America’s problems abroad. They take personal responsibility for their country, look to the future with optimism and have a lot of fun doing it. What is their secret strategy?

They have found other communities around the world. They reach out to those communities and seek to be partners, not competitors. They seek to be friends and not adversaries.

These are not merely friendships between individuals. We are talking about friendships between whole communities of people. I know of a few. I am sure there are others. If you were to travel to Bourne in Haiti, El Sauce in Nicaragua, Koforidua in Ghana, Siena in Italy, and say you are from Livingston County, you are no longer a stranger.

You begin there as a friend. That is because of the dedication and hard work of your neighbors who have gone before you. Real friendship is about dedication and hard work. Real friends are in it for the long haul.

I am not talking about traditional “Sister City” relationships. Too often, those are nothing more than a photo op with the mayor and then nothing else happens. We are talking about dynamic partnerships that produce results: increased tourism, programming in education and the arts, more jobs in both places, lots of good food, and a shared vision of a bright future.

The U.S. State Department is promoting and supporting this approach. It is called “soft diplomacy” and Livingston County is on the cutting edge.

Why do Americans sign up for big tour-packaged vacations? We do it for three reasons. We don’t speak the language. We don’t know where to eat or sleep. We don’t know what to do if we fall and break our ankle. When our community forges a long-term friendship with another community in a distant land, those three problems go away. We suddenly become free to travel and mix with the locals. We experience the real place, not the made-for-tourism place.

We find ways to overcome the language barrier (sometimes by actually learning their language). We are directed to the best hotels, restaurants and home cooking. We always have friends and resources when bad luck happens on the road. It’s a different way to think about travel. It’s life changing. It’s intellectually and spiritually fulfilling. It’s good for them and it’s good for us. It is patriotic in the best sense of the word.

Your neighbors in Livingston County have built hospitals, schools and churches in other parts of the world. They have helped to organize business and professional organizations, developed curriculum and piped clean drinking water where it needed to go.

How does this benefit us? Well, the next time we find ourselves raging in anger because we have to wait 60 seconds to turn left in Geneseo, we can spend the moment remembering the woman who carried her elderly mother on her back for four hours through the jungles of Haiti to seek care at a mobile health clinic. Our friends abroad cannot solve our traffic problem in Geneseo, but they can help us to right size the problem in our minds. They can teach us perspective.

I would like you to help me out on a project. I know a few of the communities abroad that folks in Livingston County have befriended. Wouldn’t it be great if we could make a list of all of them? If you are working with a community abroad, please let us know at the Livingston County News. We’ll collect and publish the list.

You can identify the global partnership of your organization in the comments section at the bottom of the article.

We spend a little too much of our precious breath in America trash-talking foreigners. It’s hard to figure out how that actually makes our lives better. It doesn’t. Like it or not, the world is getting smaller. Let’s make friends while we still can.