Montgomery County to forge ties with Ethiopian city - The Washington Post: County Executive Isiah Leggett will be taking a different kind of vacation this month when he visits Gondar, Ethiopia — Montgomery County’s newest sister city.
After addressing a crowd Sept. 22 at the Pan African Festival at Veterans Plaza in downtown Silver Spring, Leggett will board a plane the next day with about 40 community leaders to visit Gondar for nine days, said Bruce Adams, director of the county executive’s Office of Community Partnerships.
Leggett also will be joined on the trip by board members of the nonprofit Montgomery Sister Cities, which organizes the county’s sister cities projects. Because the county partners with Montgomery Sister Cities, the group relies on donations and does its own fundraising. Each of the attendees on the preliminary trip in January and the upcoming trip this month, including Leggett, took vacation time and paid for their own way, without any cost to taxpayers.
