UGM launched the World Conference on Science, Education, and Culture 2010 at Grha Sabha Pramana, Wednesday (12/8). The conference was themed Local Wisdom Inspiring Global Solutions (Wisdom) and was held in the presence of UGM Rector Sudjarwadi, the Head of Committee Prof. Ir. Atyanto Dharoko, a representative from UNESCO, Prof. Dr. Michael Hitchcock, and an expert staff of Inter-organizations Relations from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Thamrin. B. Bachri.
In his speech, Rector Sudjarwadi said that UGM wants to combine all the local wisdoms so that in time we can find the solutions to all the problems in the world related with social gap, discrepancy, human-human co-existence, and humans-nature co-existence. The Rector exemplified a local wisdom that succeeded making the fastest post-earthquake recovery in the world in Jogjakarta, which is community self-help (gotong royong).
UGM invited 25 universities, among whom 19 are involved in the launching, to dig out the local wisdoms in Indonesia. Thamrin. B. Bachri from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism warmly welcomes UGM’s goodwill in appreciating Indonesian cultures. "The Ministry if Culture and Tourism supports this activity to become a national event in the next 2 or 3 years," he said.
Prof. Dr. Ir. Arifin Bratawinata, Rector of Mulawarman University expressed his delight for being involved in such occasion. However, he also suggested to solve local problems like the disproportion of physical development in the eastern parts of Indonesia, and the human source development which is left so far behind. He added that East Borneo is having an environmental issue because the natural resource management is lacking awareness of how taking the resources continually can give a serious effect to the people itself. "East Borneo is very rich of natural resources, but the human resource is far left behind. So I guess this whole local wisdom issue is very relevant," he added.
(Public Relations of UGM/Gusti Grehenson)