Connecting Soul,

Celebrating Diversity

Being smart in managing the existing differences in Indonesia is the key to the country's stability and guaranteeing the security of the citizens. Religious symbols, ethnicity, race or certain groups make people divided in variety of differences, also prejudice and radicalism will add to the freezing gap of communication and interaction among community members. The training with a title in Indonesian language: Menghubungkan Jiwa, Merayakan Perbedaan (Connecting Soul, Celebrating Diversity), is one of the contributions of Stube-HEMAT for this nation.

Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta training on Multicultural Training and Interreligion Dialogue at Kukup Indah Hotel, Kukup beach area, Gunungkidul, Special Region of Yogyakarta, Friday-Sunday, August 23-25, 2019, became a forum for discussion and interaction of students from various regions studying in Yogyakarta. Delegations from Stube-HEMAT Bengkulu, activits of Stube-HEMAT Sumba and participants of South to South Program from Student Christian Movement of India (SCMI) took part in contributing ideas in the three-day training.

Connecting Soul Celebrating Diversity encouraged participants to get to know each other despite diverse backgrounds and together campaign for diversity acceptance in Indonesia. Ariani Narwastujati, Executive Director, conveyed the intricacies of Stube-HEMAT's servicess, as well as the diversity of networking at the international level, which requires each individual to understand their existence as part of diversity itself. The Student Christian Movement of India (SCMI) is one of the diversity of networks owned by this institution. Inbaraj Jeyakumar, General Secretary of SCM of India expressed the pleasure of meeting students in Indonesia and moving with SCMI to fight for equality for men and women, human rights, education, poverty alleviation and humanity.

Answering the Diversity of Religion and Culture in Indonesia, A Challenge or Opportunity? Wening Fikriyati, from Srikandi Lintas Iman (Srili) opened participants' thoughts by writing down their characteristics, for example ethnicity, skin color, religion, hair shape, and other characteristics. Next, participants are led to understand prejudice through 'games' guessing objects in a closed container. Participants managed to name a number of objects, but some were missed because of their small size and hidden. From here the participants learned that it is easy to judge something because they often meet but some are forgotten because they rarely meet. In one ‘container’ of Indonesia, cultural diversity, ethnicity, race and religion will not harmonious if it is not managed properly, and can even damage ‘the container’ itself. So, it must be maintained by getting to know and respect each other's existence through cross-cultural interactions across religions, cultural carnivals, and others.

As the evidence of the diversity, the participants wore costumes from their respective regions, such as Lampung, Sumba, Nias, Timor Leste, Kalimantan, Flores, North Sumatra and Java in a cultural parade walking around Kukup beach as a means of educating public how rich the cultures in Indonesia. This parade started the discussion about the Sekolah Kebhinekaan (School of Diversity) with Rev. Christiana Riyadi, Bilal Ahmad from JAI, Rev. Lucas, and Budi as PDHI representatives. The Sekolah Kebhinekaan was initiated by the Klasis Gunungkidul churches with NU, Fatayat, MBI, PDHI, JAI and other institutions as a means of education for interfaith youth about inclusive and tolerant characters in Gunungkidul regency through joint interactions, watching short films about tolerance, visiting places of worship, doing live-in with people with different religions and designing campaigns for diversity and tolerance.

Next, the participants explored examples of local wisdom in various regions in Indonesia such as Sandinganeng in Halmahera and Sintuwu Maroso in Poso. The cultural and art performance night was exciting with the participants’ performances  started from Aru Islands song and local Nias song, poetry, song and gestures from India and theater by the trainees. It made the feeling of togetherness among participants grew stronger.

The participants' follow-up actions with new knowledge and experiences that they have during the training were manifested in their action plans to voice tolerance, understanding inclusion and togetherness through diversity videos, writing about regional cultural heritages, student discussions and participation in interfaith and cross culture movements. Hopefully in the future everyone will find interrelation without prejudice and discover the beauty of diversity in Indonesia. (TRU).