Indonesian Culture Exhibiton 2011

Indonesian Culture Exhibition 2011 was held from March 10 th – 11th, 2011 at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei.

The event was organized by Indonesian Student Association at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology ." We want to promote Indonesian Culture to Taiwanese and experience the diversity “said Citra, President of NTUST-ISA. Staged annually, The Exhibition was once again a great success and more exciting, educative and diverse than ever before. More than 1000 visitors attended the fair.

Bamboo Community University Association ( BCUA) as one of Co-Host of the Event presented African Drum performance. Aiming to give visitors cross culture experiences and attract many visitors from different ages. "Even just a short show but visitors can learn how to play a simple song and feel the exciting beats and rhythms of the African Drums" said Nick Lee, BCUA project manager.

BCUA started a strong partnership with Indonesian NGOs and Universities after Aceh Tsunami in 2004. We recruit volunteers from National Chiao Tung University known as I-DO Volunteer Team and National Tsing Hua University known as E-Mate Volunteer Teamto serve in Indonesia. E-Mate team which will go to Aceh this summer 2011 for volunteer project focus on ICT development, Gayonese Culture and Fair Trade Coffee also came to the Exhibition to know more about Indonesia and meet Acehnese student in NTUST. While I-DO which focus on Indonesia rain forest and Orangutan conservation came to the Event for fundraising and try to promote their project in Indonesia.

Traditional dishes, games, cultural wedding dressings and wood cravings as well as household utilities and ornaments were presented in different features. The cultural folk dance accompanying the opening and closing ceremony brought memories for many visitors.

Review of SOS newsletter JungleVine.

After I finished reading the SOS newsletter JungleVine, issues 20-24 , I think that SOS is reaching the goals to communicate, raise public awareness and present accountability with SOS members and donors. As you can see the structure of the newsletter is divided into three parts, branch news about fundrasing and public awareness activities across UK, USA, Bali, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden, campaign and conservation news to catch up with the most critical conservation issues related to SOS'work, and project news from Sumatra for donors to know how their money was used to support conservation projects.

It is very important to engage members or potential supporters with the charity's work with continuous news and achievements. For SOS,I think they have done a great job to use Web 2.0 media power like website portal, newsletters, blog, Facebook and Twitter to communicate with their members, donors and fans. This is what BCUA could learn and from which could be a model for us to reconstruct a Mandarin/ English bilingual portal website to manage our projects and satisfy our customers and audience.

There are many interesting awareness activities which could be adopted in Taiwan like pedal power cinema (as mentioned in JungleVine 25), walk or run for orangutan (as mentioned in SOS Australia news of JungleVine 24), viewing orangutans in zoos (as mentioned in SOS Sweden news JungleVine 25) and brainstorming with kids to fundraise for orangutans or rainforest, competition for fundraising, and interaction amongst like-minded fans on facebook like "Harapan Parade" and "T-Shirt Design Competition" (the coming JungleVine 26 in October this year).

What most impressed me is that the charity Patron is very popular and an ordinary scenario in UK. In Taiwan, it is difficult for small NGOs or charities to find patrons. A comedian Bill Bailey had held several big fundrasing events with other celebrities in London (as mentioned in JungleVine 23-25) for SOS, which is not bigger or more famous than the other four charities whose cause is orangutan conservation too.

Many people in Taiwan probably will know the famous UK band called Bee Gees whose member Robin Gibb and his wife are patrons against breast cancer. This is another example to show you that famous faces will do a lot for charity.

Try to visualize the content structure of JungleVine with XMind.

Thanks to Helen Buckland who is SOS UK Director and had made a valuable revision for this article. :)