Carson City Mayor Bob Crowell greets a Russian delegation on its U.S. tour of environmental sites and nature preserves.
A Russian delegation spent eight days exploring Lake Tahoe, Virginia City and other sites in the Carson City area as part of a program that promotes lasting professional relationships between emerging leaders and their U.S. counterparts.
Friendship Force of Reno/Tahoe, a local nonprofit cultural exchange club, hosted the delegation through the Open World Leadership Center, a bipartisan agency that supports outreach for congressional members and conducts cultural exchanges.
Starting Feb. 2, the seven-member group stopped in Northern Nevada on its tour of environmental sites and nature preserves in the United States. The visit completed on Feb. 10.
The visitors included Valentina Senchenko; Olga Kudrina; Fedor Strelnikov; Evgenii Babushkin; Dmitrii Sychikov; Olga Tikhonova; and translator Alexander Krainiy.
The trip was further supported by the following host families from the Carson City and Minden area: Brian and Tanya Dunn; Joycie Hinton; Ben and Sharon Urban Swanson; Robert and Gina Crowell and Charmaine Rickard; Bruce Mitchener and Linda Sekiguchi; Dave Maderis; and Ralph and Lynn Capurro.
For information about Friendship Force, go to www.thefriendshipforce.org, or contact Sharonurban@charter.net. The Open World Leadership Center website is at www.openworld.gov.