International Joint Activity (IJA) 2025 was again held at Universitas Katolik Widya Mandala Surabaya (UKWMS) from 17 February until 21 February 2025. It is an annual program implemented by UKWMS since 2017 in collaboration with the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) from Taiwan, the Osaka Institute of Technology (OIT) from Japan and the Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT) from Japan. This year, UKWMS accepted a total of 24 international students from those 3 universities.
The theme of IJA 2025 is “Creating for Earth: Exploring Creative Campaigns to Address Ecological Issues,” which stems from the concern over the increasingly prevalent issues related to environmental sustainability around us. In the midst of increasingly pressing environmental challenges, there is a growing need for innovative approaches to raise ecological awareness that encourage sustainable lifestyles. Thus, creative campaigns are seen as an effective tool in environmental advocacy, offering a unique way to communicate complex ecological issues in a form that is easy to understand and appealing to the general public, particularly the younger generation.
Prior to the arrival of international student participants, the student buddies from UKWMS, who were also involved as participants, were given several briefing classes, including “Creative Social Campaign” delivered by Grishiella Patricia Liwang, S.I.Kom., M.Med.Kom., a lecturer from the Faculty of Communication Sciences of UKWMS, as well as a class called “Climate Change X Artivism: Amplifying Voices through Creative and Sustainable Actions” by Wahyu Eka Setyawan, Executive Director of Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WALHI) East Java. The student buddies then acted as the facilitators in their small group that included international participants when trying to come up with creative social campaign ideas.
As part of their activities, all of IJA participants were invited to one of the Bank Sampah Induk in Surabaya (BSIS), or also known at the main waste bank (a place to dispose of garbage) in the city of Surabaya, to attend a class on the utilization of eco-enzyme to make soap. They also had the opportunity to tour the facility and observe the waste-sorting process managed by the Bina Bhakti Lingkungan Foundation. “After joining the classes, the student buddies and international students were then given two days to develop ideas and solutions to address environmental issues. The participants can either express their ideas through a poster or other creative works. The results will be exhibited to the other UKWMS’ academic community,” explained Ayu Gayatri, S.Sosio., as the staff of the UKWMS’ International Affairs Office (IAO).
The exhibition was titled “Create for Earth Expo” and it was held at the St. Augustine Plaza of UKWMS Dinoyo Campus on the last day of IJA. There were a total of six teams. Here are the titles of those creative campaign works: “Not Just Ur Trash”, “Stifled Air Heavy Breath & Clean Air True Breath”, “A Third of All Food Produced Gets Wasted Everyday: That’s a Billion Meals a Day”, “Your Paper Trail: The Deforestation Connection”, “Dialectics Aesthetics”, and “Fresh from the Ocean”.
The judges for the exhibition were also the two speakers that provided the basic understanding of social campaigns, Grishiella Patricia Liwang from UKWMS and Wahyu Eka Setyawan from WALHI East Java. “Their work deserves appreciation, because it has touched on creative campaigns and is following the target audience. The posters and interactive activities help the visitors to understand the issues that were raised,” Grishiella explained.
Through a series of assessments by the judges, team 2 with the campaign called “Stifled Air Heavy Breath & Clean Air True Breath” and its website work to display information about the dangers of air pollution and the air quality index, won first place. Last but not least, team 5 with their campaign and anaglyphic work titled “Dialectics Aesthetics” was chosen as the audience’s Popular Choice winner.
Source: UKWMS