This year Socal Sister Cities awarded scholarships to two exceptional women.

At the Socal meeting on February 28, Alan Lamson, Chair of the Scholarship Committee, presented a certificate and a check to Vanessa Crawford from Santa Barbara Sister Cities, who brought her parents with her, Harold and Rosanne Crawford. Vanessa has been active with Santa Barbara sister cities since 2004 when she participated in a Puerto Vallarta/ Santa Barbara exchange.

Since then she has been active with exchange activities between those two cities. In addition, she has helped organize two United Nations youth forums in Santa Barbara. Vanessa is now a fourth year student at U.C.LA. where she is senior majoring in Ecology Behavior and Evolutionary Biology and working to start a sister cities club on campus.

Bryndis Klein, our other winner, is now a senior at the University of Maryland, majoring in Government and Politics. She started her participation in sister cities in 2001 when--at the age of 14--she served as a youth ambassador to Okazaki, Japan. Over the years, Bryndis has been very active in promoting the sister city relationship between Okazaki and Newport Beach. In 2008 she was selected to be part of a youth delegation from Long Beach that visited Qingdao, China to "share stories of volunteerism and Olympic memorabilia" since Qingdao was the host site of the sailing regattas for the 2008 Olympic games.