Berita

UMY held International Cultural and Culinary Festival (ICCF) to introduce the diversity of cultures from various countries. Joined by 20 countries, the event has succeeded in bringing an international atmosphere to UMY. Programs such as kitchen street, cultural performances, and cultural week are conducted to enlivened this year’s event.

ICCF that held by UMY’s Cooperation and Partnership Office is an annual event which is designed to give a platform for foreign students who are undertaking their study in Yogyakarta to gather and represent their cultures. Furthermore, the program hopefully could establish a better communication and new relations for students in UMY which hopefully elevate their eagerness for international experiences.

The event held on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2018 at Ground Floor, Masjid Ahmad Dahlan, UMY was previously named as International Cultural Festival (ICF), until it settled into International Cultural and Culinary Festival (ICCF), with the aim to emphasize the use of culinary as a cultural representative of a country. Mr. Yordan Gunawan as the director of UMY Office of International Affairs explained about the taken theme; the Beauty in Diversity is an expression to describe what our differences are supposed to be cheered and should be well maintained, instead of to let them drive mankind to conflict and violation. “However, we were created imperfectly, so we were meant to complete each other,” said Yordan.

As our Vice Rector of Students, Alumnae, and AIK (Al-Islam & Kemuhammadiyahan), Hilman Latief, Ph.D., said on his Opening Remarks, ”Our mission is to introduce other cultures, so that dialogue process about exchange knowledge and experience to know further about each culture could happen.”

Kitchen Street as the main activity in ICCF 2018 was joined by various countries representative; United State, Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Yemen, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Egypt, The Philippines, Italia, Australia, etc. Around 160 performers coming from various country partners of UMY came to entertain guests, providing amusing art performances such as music, role play, or dances.

Finally, also conducted at the same time was a Gallery Walk as the final stage of Learning Express held through the cooperation between UMY and Singapore Polytechnic. This program is a joint international community service where students from UMY and Singapore Polytechnic were doing a social innovation activity based on their empathy study in some Yogyakarta’s villages.