International Community Development “Go-East Java 2.0”: Cultural Exhibitions for Licin Village Community

From February 21 to March 7, 2025, Kelab Lambaian Masyarakat Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) with the Student Executive Board Universitas Airlangga, under the World University Association for Community Development (WUACD) held a collaboration to do an international community service program called “Go-East Java 2.0.” This program focused on the empowerment of village communities through a multidimensional approach, covering technical, economic-cultural, educational, health aspects, culture, education, and health. Through a combination of appropriate technology and community-based strategies, this activity aims to create village transformation based on innovation and sustainability. During the implementation, this program was mainly located in Licin Village, and several other locations in Banyuwangi, and one of the highlighted fields that this program wanted to focus on was cultural exchange.

With the said objectives in mind, all the attendees of this program participated in Jamu-making classes and its promotional activities. The program was targeted to introduce Jamu and its benefits to the local communities, in this case, the people of Licin, and Malaysian counterparts. By doing this activity, they were promoting Jamu and its health benefits to a lot of people, especially the younger generation. This activity was also beneficial to showcase the advancements that have been made in the field, including ‘modernizing’ jamu to make them more appealing to those who had never tried and escalate the economical value of jamu.

Moving on to the next activities, the participants from both parties are joined together in a session of cooking Malaysian traditional dishes together. This class was initiated by participants from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia to promote and introduce Malaysian food to its closest neighbor, which is Indonesia. These activities were done successfully due to the excellent cooperation and teamwork of all the parties involved enhancing the cross-cultural communication among student participants and adding the knowledge of each nation’s culture.

On a separate day not too long from the previous agenda, an event to celebrate Ramadhan, which is the holy month for Muslim people to do many kinds of prayers, was held. The agenda was started by cleaning up the local mosque that is going to be used to do Al-Quran recitals. Since it is the holy month, there is a special prayer (sunnah, in Islamic terms) called tarawih, which is done only in Ramadhan and longed for by so many Muslim people. By doing this activity, the participants are introduced to gotong royong: the term literally translates to “to lift together”, with gotong meaning “to lift” and royong meaning “together”. This is a deeply ingrained value in Indonesian Culture, emphasizing a mutual cooperation and shared responsibility with the community.

As one of the collaborators of “Go-East Java 2.0”, WUACD is committed to implementing SDG 17 (Partnership for the Goals) by strengthening meaningful global partnerships for sustainable development. Through this program, WUACD, with its partner universities which are Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universitas Airlangga share the same goals in developing the village’s and local communities’ understanding of their own culture, as well as fostering a deep connection between all the parties included.