The beginning of the sister city initiative idea goes back to 2013, which was proposed by the Kurdish American Cultural Institute/ KACI. KACI tried hard to get support for this idea.At First, KACI presented the idea to the Public Affairs office at American Consulate General in Erbil and gained their support. Second, met with Erbil former Governor Nawzad Hadi, he was thrilled by the Idea. Third, met with a number of former members of the Nashville Sister City Committee to encourage them and mentioned the Erbil Governorate and US consulate interest and support in this project. in 2016, when the organization hosted Kurdish arts Festival partnering with Tennessee state University, we accompanied a delegation from Erbil Province to Nashville to participate and take a tour of Nashville city.
A number of reasons in Kurdistan delayed this project such as financial crisis, the arrival of ISIS, the Kurdistan Regional Government vs Iraqi Central Government conflict in 2017 and the Covid in 2019. These had all the negative effects on the project. in 2020 once again we opened the subject with US consulate for continuing this project. based on our request former US Consul General (Rob Waller) met twice with Former Governor of Erbil (Dr. Firsat Soffy) during the covid. while we were planning and preparing a trip to Nashville to meet with Nashville Officials and Sister City committee Sadly (Dr. Firsat Sofy) got infected by covid Virus after a few weeks he died. We had to wait for several months on a new elected Governor. Fortunately, the American Kurdish Cultural Institute did not give up on the project and continued to do so.
Once the New Governor ( Omed Khoshnaw) got elected in the office again we had to open the subject. Luckily this time KACI was able to organize a trip to Nashville to meet with the city officials. In May 2022 We were able to get sponsors to cover the travel expenses for the delegation of Erbil local government led by Governor of Erbil to Nashville.During the 4 days trip the Erbil Delegation was able to meet with the Nashville City officials and organizations. Which included the followings: Tennessee Governor’s Chief of Staff (Joseph Williams), Mayor of Nashville (John Cooper), Vice Mayor and the head of the legislative body (Jim Shulman) and attend meeting of Nashville Metropolitan council, Sister City committee, Nashville area chamber of Commerce, Tennessee State University, Down Town Nashville Public Library, group of Lawyers and Tour of music city Center.
In August 2022 Nashville Sister City had its meeting with Majority of member’s Vote, they decided to continue the Nashville – Erbil Sister City initiative project, based on the great successful outcome of the May 2022 trip.

for more information regarding sister city process please visit the following link.