Schmidt leads Elk Grove’s Sister Cities effort

Steve Schmidt’s first visit to Italy was in 2002 as part of a delegation of Elk Grove Village leaders to Termini Imerese, a town on the north coast of Sicily east of the city of Palermo. Schmidt, who was then the village’s police chief, said he wasn’t crazy about having to go.

“I’d never been out of the U.S. before,” says Schmidt, an “honorary Italian” of German descent. “But once I got there I fell in love with Italy and Sicily and they had to drag me back to the plane.”

So it isn’t much of a surprise that after the trip Schmidt began volunteering his time with Elk Grove Italian Sister Cities, which made his voyage possible. And just three years later, he was named the group’s president and has been working ever since to ensure other Americans can make the same journey.

Elk Grove Village and Termini Imerese became sister cities in 2000 thanks to the efforts of Giovanni Gullo, an Elk Grove Village businessman who was raised near Termini Imerese and saw how similar the two municipalities are. Termini Imerese is a town of around 35,000 people with an important seaport and large industrial area. Elk Grove Village has around 33,000 residents, is near the busy O’Hare Airport and has the largest contiguous business park in America, with over 5,000 businesses. Gullo remains the group’s executive director and chairman.

The cornerstone of EGISC is the student exchange program, which Schmidt helped launch in 2007. In a typical year, a group of Italian students from Gregorio Ugdulena State High School in Termini Imerese arrive for a few weeks in November, staying with Elk Grove High School families.

“They live here and get to celebrate Thanksgiving with their American families,” Schmidt says.

And then in March, a group of American students fly to Sicily and spend time with Italian families.

“The program is very successful. We’ve had many students who sign up for Italian classes as High School Freshmen knowing they had a chance to go to Italy through the program as Seniors,” Schmidt says. “We’ve had families with multiple students go through the program as well.”

The organization holds annual fundraising to cover the cost of activities like the welcome reception and farewell celebrations, Schmidt says. But he says costs are kept low because the students stay with host families and are responsible for buying their own airfare.

The organization also hosts annual tourism trips for adults. This June, a group that could grow to as large as 50 people will spend 10 days in Sicily and four days in Tuscany.

To celebrate 25 years of partnership, there will be another exchange of delegates from Elk Grove Village and Termini Imerese. Schmidt says the Americans will visit Italy over the summer and the Italians will visit America in October. Schmidt says the hope is that the Termini Imerese delegates will get to participate in the Chicago Columbus Day parade.

Schmidt says the lifelong friendships that have resulted from the sister city programs has been one of the most important outcomes.

“We know from the past that students have gone back to visit their friends they made on their exchange trip,” he says. “We’re establishing lifelong friendships here and allowing students to meet someone from halfway around the world.”

So far two marriages have also emerged from the program. In both cases, Schmidt says, the bride and groom were both Americans who met while part of the exchange program.

Schmidt has the program to thank for his own marriage to Cindy Aloisio-Schmidt, who is from Sicily, works for Giovanni Gullo’s company — the Gullo International Development Corporation – and is the treasurer of the Sister Cities organization. The couple got engaged in Sicily in 2010 and were married in 2013.