Students from Arlington high schools will have the opportunity to connect directly with their counterparts in a city in Ukraine later this year.
A new pen pal initiative with Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine will add to a pilot program connecting local high schoolers to Reims, France.
“In their exchanges, students can share stories, ideas and everyday experiences,” organizers said. “By writing to one another, students build understanding, empathy and lasting friendships across cultures and borders.”
The effort is led by Alyssa Bivins, the education task force chair of the Arlington Sister City Association board.
“Once [the Reims] pilot is completed in April, we will begin rolling the pen-pal opportunity out to our other Sister Cities,” Bivins told ARLnow.
Arlington’s other sister cities are Aachen, Germany; San Miguel, El Salvador; and (currently dormant) Coyoacán, Mexico. Ivano-Frankivsk and San Miguel have expressed significant interest in participating, Bivins said.
The initiative “was designed in a way that ensures students’ safety and privacy,” organizers said.
In 2025, the Sister Cities organization hosted an online “firefighter exchange” between Arlington and Ivano-Frankivsk. At a planning session in December, new initiatives for 2026 were discussed to connect with the Ukrainian city, whose population of 240,000 is approximately that of Arlington’s.
The planning meeting was led by Sophia Taylor, who heads the Ivano-Frankivsk committee for the Arlington Sister City Association, and included participation by Chrystia Sonevytsky, who in the early 1990s spearheaded the Sister City agreement between the two communities.
Although located in the western part of Ukraine, away from the immediate war zone, Ivano-Frankivsk was targeted by Russian missiles in the first days of the conflict in 2022 and has been subjected to sporadic aerial attacks since.
In 2022, Arlington County donated excess equipment, supplies and protective gear from its public safety agencies to support Ukrainian first responders. Also that year, a number of fundraisers were held to support Ukraine relief, including one by students at Nottingham Elementary School.
This year will mark the 15th anniversary of the Sister City relationship between Arlington and Ivano-Frankivsk.
In 2011, then-County Board Chair Chris Zimmerman joined Viktor Anushkevychus, then the mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, at a signing ceremony in Crystal City. The signing was held as part of the 55th annual Sister Cities International Conference, which took place in Arlington.
Located close to Ukraine’s borders with Romania, Poland and Slovakia, Ivano-Frankivsk and its immediate surroundings changed hands several times in the 20th century before incorporation into the newly independent Ukraine in 1991.
Part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire until its collapse after World War I, the city in 1919 became part of Poland; was absorbed into the USSR in 1939; was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941-44; and remained part of the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.
Its history dates back to the mid-1600s, when Ivano-Frankivsk was established as a fortress city named Stanisławów to defend against attacks on Polish territory during the Polish-Cossack-Tatar War.
Photo via Maksym Kytsiuk/Unsplash
