Speech and Testimony
County Executive Leggett’s Remarks at The Ethiopian Day Festival
Silver Spring Civic Building
1 Veterans Plaza, Silver Spring
As prepared
Good evening!
I would like to thank the Ethiopian Community Center of Maryland for organizing today’s festivities.
The Center has the admirable mission to provide reliable, quality, and accessible community services to all Ethiopian-Americans and other people in need in Maryland.
The Center promotes cultural enrichment and understanding, and appreciation of Ethiopian culture and history.
It also serves as a center for safety and emergency response during accidents; and reaches out to those in need during tragedy as the Center did recently at the Flower Branch Apartments fire on August 10.
In 2012, the African community through a competitive process, chose Gondar, Ethiopia, to be Montgomery County’s Sister City in Africa.
Later that year, 40 people from Montgomery County, including staff from Montgomery College, joined me to visit our Sister City, as well as to Addis Ababa, Axum, and Lalibela.
Ethiopia is the perfect place for our County to have a person-to-person Sister City.
Today in Montgomery County, Ethiopians are the second fastest growing immigrant community in the County; and they are the largest African community in Montgomery County.
Just a short a distance from where this festival is taking place, in fact, there has been a boom of Ethiopian-run businesses (markets, coffee shops, restaurants, what have you) in the downtown Silver Spring area, including Georgia Avenue and Fenton Street to name a couple.
Our Sister City is a long-term relationship between our two people, and I expect many more projects and exchanges in the years to come.
The Sister City program is not our only link to Ethiopia.
Three years ago, we added an Amharic language collection to our Silver Spring Library. If you have not yet visited our redesigned Silver Spring library that re-opened about a year ago last June, I hope you will soon. It is quite an impressive place.
Adding the Amharic language collection is a major step toward better meeting the needs of all our residents.
I hope you have been enjoying this celebration; and I thank you for the time you have spent with us here in Montgomery County.
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September 4, 2016; 7 p.m.