Dear Members of the American-Danish Business Council,
Two large celebrations – Wounded Warrior Week and Constitution Day Celebration – are taking place in the beginning of June. These events are only possible because of your support as members of ADBC. I want you to know how extremely grateful I am for that.
This week – from May 28th to June 3rd, Wounded Warrior Week is taking place at Virginia Beach. Wounded Warrior Week is organized by United Services Organization (USO) as an initiative to support U.S. military veterans and their families in their recovery and well-being. The festival has therapeutic and recreational activities such as surfing, skydiving, kayaking, cycling, coastal fishing, horsemanship, workouts and music concerts. Because of the strong ties and great collaboration between American and Danish military and veterans organizations, 20 Danish veterans along with their families participated in last year’s Wounded Warrior Week for the first time.
This year, we will repeat this success in honour of our veterans. Thanks to the support from ADBC member companies, 45 Danish veterans and their families will participate in Wounded Warrior Week 2018. And this year, in addition to military veterans, police veterans from both the U.S. and Denmark will be participating.
On June 5th, we will host a big celebration of the Danish Constitution Day at my residency and garden at the Danish Embassy. Last year’s inaugural Constitution Day Celebration was a great success, and we hope that this becomes an established mid-year tradition. At the Danish Constitution Day, we invite all the Embassy’s important stakeholders from the political world, U.S. government, non-profits and businesses along with our honourable veterans. This year, we are expecting over 800 guests. I am very much looking forward to seeing most of you on this great day.
The Embassy had many successful activities in April and May, and you can read about them in this newsletter. In particular, I want to highlight our EU Open House on May 12th, as I think we really managed to make a great promotion of Denmark, Danish Culture and Danish Businesses on this sunny day. We had almost 6,000 guests visiting the Danish Embassy to experience a huge LEGO playground for the kids, delicious food and cold beers for the grownups. More Danish companies participated in this event than ever before, including LEGO, Novo Nordisk, Kelsen, Flødeboller, Arla, Joe & the Juice.
Lastly, I want to share with you that the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Denmark has asked me to join their organization as Honorary President together with the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, Carla Sands. My expectation is that further developing the relationship between ADBC and AmCham will serve you as members in a variety of important ways. Economic diplomacy is part of the core mission at the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC. Whatever we do, we try to use our insights about and access to the political system in the United States to advance the commercial ties between Denmark and the United States. The American-Danish Business Council is an important part of that mission, and I believe that our cooperation with AmCham will strengthen our economic diplomacy efforts even more.