YOGYAKARTA – Graduating from college is no longer identical with looking for work, but graduates have to be creative to create jobs. Since studying in college, students should already have this paradigm by having a stock of knowledge and work practices in the field.
Master of Management program (MM) UGM answers that by inviting practitioners and entrepreneurs who became guest lecturers to provide a snapshot of practice in the field. Not only that, MM UGM also invited players of small and medium enterprises through the exhibition of 10 small and medium enterprises engaged in batik. "Besides to help preserve national culture, this activity is to provide experience for students to learn and share experience with SMEs in running a business," said Chairman of Smart Corner Club MM UGM, Nindya Nur Aryani, who was met on the sidelines of batik exhibition in Auditorium of MM UGM.
Learning from the experience of SMEs is helping students get into entrepreneurship. To become an entrepreneur should also be initiated by SMEs. "We want to learn a lot from SMEs. Since after graduating, we do not have to work with others, but also employ other people,"said Nindya.
Chairman of the steering committee, Rindha Avrina, also said similar things. She said, it is not adequate to just know the big companies and retail businesses, but people must know much about SMEs, as well as the profile of SMEs in Yogyakarta. "We introduce SMEs in Yogyakarta to know more about their experience when starting a business," she said.
Why batik? "Jogja is identical with batik. Here, students are expected to know and love their own national culture, especially in MM there are many foreign students. At least they know that batik is the culture of Indonesia," she said. She added that batik as Indonesia’s cultural heritage should still be maintained and preserved. One way is to give additional economic values through batik SMEs.
In addition, students were given the opportunity to join batik training. They were introduced to the history of batik, ranging from the types, motifs, and style in Indonesia. At least, 30 students followed this event.
A foreign student from the Netherlands, Amber (24), said to be very glad with the batik training. The girl born in Rotterdam admitted it is the first experience for her to be invited to make batiks. She was also surprised. "It’s quite pleasing. Now, I know how to make batiks, though it is a little bit difficult," said the girl, a descendant from Padang and Bali families.
Although growing in the windmills country, Amber admitted she knew much about batik. Understandably, since childhood she often received gifts of batik cloth from relatives who came from Indonesia. For her, batik fashion is the best in the world in addition to clothing from Hawaii.
Amber has a couple of batik kebaya collections at her home in the Netherlands. Typically, she often wears a batik kebaya when attending official events at the Indonesian Embassy in the Netherlands. Incidentally, her grandfather works at the Dutch Embassy in Indonesia. "I have two batik kebayas!" exclaimed the second child of three children with a smile of pride.