The nonprofit Neighbors Abroad is set to host an International Festival this Saturday to showcase Palo Alto's relationship with its eight sister cities and its newly announced domestic sibling city — Bloomington, Indiana. The highlight of the festival, which will run for five hours starting at noon outside Palo Alto City Hall, will be the unveiling of the new Sister/Sibling City sign at 4 p.m.

Representatives from Oaxaca, Mexico as well as Heidelberg, Germany and Bloomington will join the Aug. 27 celebration, according to the event webpage. Palo Alto Mayor Pat Burt, City Council member Tom DuBois and others will also attend the ceremony. Admission is free to the festival, which will include food and drinks provided by local vendors and performances by artists from all around the world. Vendors include Mexican food truck Zaida's Kitchen, Waffle Amore food truck and Griffin Hill, a winery from the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Performers at the International Festival will range from instrumentalists to martial artists. Verlene Schermer and Fête Musette will each play instruments native to Sweden and France, respectively, and stick fighters from Legacy Filipino Martial Arts School will showcase traditional Filipino martial arts to honor Palo Alto's sister cities — Linköping, Sweden, Albi, France and Palo, Philippines.

The pinnacle of the event will be the unveiling of the new directional sign by Palo Alto leaders honoring Palo Alto's international sister cities and its domestic sibling city. After the removal of the previous sister cities sign, local leaders will reveal the new post, which will include Bloomington.

In 2021, Palo Alto announced a first-of-its-kind program pairing the city economically and culturally with a stateside counterpart, according to reporting by the Weekly. That effort was led by the new nonprofit Sibling Cities USA, which brings together U.S. cities in pairs to build relationships, and Neighbors Abroad, the host of the International Festival.

Neighbors Abroad has embodied the idea that citizen diplomats can change the world since 1973, according to the nonprofit's webpage. The organization is affiliated with Sister Cities International as well as with the city of Palo Alto and works to develop partnerships around the world.

"We model the leverage that a nonprofit can bring to local government by bringing the community and businesses to support a formal relationship of Palo Alto as a government to those local governments we call our Sister Cities and now Sibling Cities," said Bob Wenzlau, president of Neighbors Abroad.

The emphasis on diplomacy, and more recently, sustainability has been his life's calling for Wenzlau. While a student at Stanford University, Wenzlau was part of an initiative to create a curbside recycling system that was later launched by the city of Palo Alto.

Through Neighbors Abroad, Wenzlau has led many environmental initiatives with sister cities, including the first carbon offset purchase between California and Mexico, according to his biography. Currently, the nonprofit has offset approximately 25,000 tons of carbon emissions due to Palo Alto's shift to natural gas, according to Wenzlau.

For the festival, Neighbors Abroad will be working in conjunction with the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce, who will be hosting the Palo Alto Festival of the Arts at the same time a few blocks away on University Avenue.

The International Festival will feature activities and exhibitions for all ages, including an installation from Neighbors Abroad's Art and Sustainability Initiative, which uses visual art to inspire sustainability projects, according to the initiative's webpage.

"We believe that art is a gateway to creating inspiration to make our planet more sustainable," Wenzlau said.

For more information on the event and Neighbors Abroad's initiatives, visit its website at neighborsabroad.org.