Time spent away from home country is an excellent way of enriching a student’s experience. In UGM, we provide opportunities for foreign students to make the most of their time.

International travel to Indonesia will offer students a whole new experience that comes with adjusting to a new environment. With the size almost as big as the US, Indonesia has become a trillion-dollar economy. This is potential that young people with innovative ideas and sustainable development mindset cannot miss. To interact with the locals and exchange socio and cultural diversities on the first hand is a valuable opportunity for students to prepare for increasingly borderless world.

Currently most of international students in UGM take short to medium term study program such as Summer Course and Exchange Program. Time is the essence during their program. UGM tailor essential activities that guide international students to capture key knowledge of living and studying in Indonesia particularly in UGM.

Among all the study subject in UGM undergraduate level, community service is a mandatory program for every UGM student. The same program is adapted for international student during their study period. Students as a group spend around two weeks of their time living with the community and empowers them from within.

Conducting community services where students work with their group and are involved with the community to face and solve their problems is one way to build and strengthen awareness and care. Through community service, coupled with world-class education, students may have excellent grass-root understanding and adequate global competence. With that, mind openness becomes the character where people’s views on anything are enriched with multiple perspectives.

UGM develops community empowerment program based on the application of Appropriate Technology that gives priority to science, technology, art and culture. The issues in the community are chosen as program topics and resolved together by the UGM team with the target group.

UGM has learnt that the use of Appropriate Technology improves the quality of service to the community, by applying science, technology, art and culture that can be implemented directly in the community, so that it can improve community welfare

Indonesia archipelago is located on The Ring Pacific of Fire. These locations make Indonesia prone to disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and landslides. UGM plays an active role in the area of disaster management by establishing a disaster response unit known as DERU (Disaster Response Unit).

DERU is UGM’s official unit that will respond to every disaster that occurs in Indonesia. DERU also acts as a body to manage UGM students who intend to volunteer in disaster areas and to manage disaster relief.

RCE Yogyakarta is part of Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCEs) in which headquarter is in Tokyo, Japan. As part of the RCEs program mission, UGM is developing concepts and technologies that support education for sustainable development and implementing them in community basis.

One of the RCE Yogyakarta’s leading programs is the annual Summer Course Youth Leadership Program on Sustainable Development. This program aims to help youth in realizing their potential as the agent of change and to contribute to issues related to sustainable development.