Aspen Sister Cities Wins International Award for Adaptive Ski Exchange Program with Argentinian Mountain City

Aspen Sister Cities won the Business, Trade and Professional Exchange Innovation Award for its partnership with Bariloche, Argentina.

The two cities, partnered for 22 years, exchange professional adaptive ski instructors and Challenge Aspen volunteers. Challenge Aspen has also donated equipment to Desafio Bariloche, an organization that teaches adaptive skiing, for the past two decades.

“This exchange benefits participants with cognitive and/or physical disabilities by providing enriching social interactions and quality time outdoors,” Sister Cities International said in a press release. This program has been running for 21 years.

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Aspen coordinators Lala Caffarone and Griff Smith accepted the award in Tacoma, Washington, at the annual Sister Cities International Business Meeting on July 17. The category was for cities with a population of less than 25,000.

“We were both very excited because we think it’s important to recognize these organizations and every person who makes these organizations possible,” said Caffarone, who is from Argentina and lived in Bariloche before moving to Aspen in 2000.

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She also volunteered at Challenge Aspen prior to working at Aspen Sister Cities.

“So we’re very proud to be working with Challenge Aspen and Bariloche because we think it’s such amazing work,” she said. “We are delighted to be able to facilitate this collaboration.”

Like Aspen, Bariloche is another mountain town and “is the gateway to Patagonia, located in the Rio Negro province within the Nahuel Huapi National Park near the Andes Mountains. It is surrounded by thousand-year-old forests, snow-capped mountains and crystal clear lakes. It has been declared the Argentine capital of adventure tourism, offering a wide variety of outdoor activities and sports throughout the year. The main ski slopes are at Cerro Catedral, the largest ski resort in South America,” the Aspen Sister Cities website states.

Smith worked in public education for 30 years before becoming involved with Aspen Sister Cities.

“In middle school, we teach French and Spanish, and the Spanish teacher and I were starting to think, ‘Well, why don’t we try to find a Spanish-speaking sister city that would encourage our students to continue their studies in Spanish?’ “, he said. “Well, as you can imagine, there aren’t many Spanish-speaking countries with ski resorts like Aspen in this world. So we did a little research, traveled a little and ended up in Bariloche, a community that was really compatible with us, with a lot of positive energy.”

Aspen has six other sister cities that share its similarity in population and geography: Abetone, Italy; Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France; Davos, Switzerland; Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany; Queenstown, New Zealand; and Shimukappu Japan.

Sister Cities International has been giving out awards since 1962, and Aspen has received three of them — one for best overall program, another for its medical exchange program and this year’s.

Bariloche will exchange 10 artists with Aspen for one week in September. This program has been held in the valley every year for the past 10 years. Various activities will be open to the public, including an exhibit called “Reunion” in the Aspen Chapel Gallery beginning August 21.