I am a politics student majoring in International Relation in Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. Being and IR student heavily requires me to be an active thinker in figuring the phrase 'global to the local'. It led me to be a 'diversity seeker' and Yogyakarta certainly offers the need of fulfilling my 'cultural complexity' exhaustion with its 'Never Ending Asia' jargon. It is a small city, though. It is also the capital of Yogyakarta Special Region, or I could say, capital city of Javanese divine culture.
At certain levels, Yogyakarta is conventional, but in other fields, it serves 'the metropolitan dreams' which somehow looks very 'tempting' to the people living in rural areas, with or without talent when it comes to survive in a city. Needless to say that the so-called 'globalization' has became the means that hugely change the face of the city into a 'shopping heaven' or 'breadwinners fields of gold'. In the end, it invites people from rural area around Yogyakarta city to come and resides, temporarily or permanently. The people who were 'left behind' by the rapidness of development in Yogyakarta ended up being poor or even poorer than before.
These people then trapped in several slums area, wrestling everyday with the bitterness of ghetto life. One of the biggest slum areas in Yogyakarta is concentrated in Kali Code, oddly situated alongside huge houses owned by the 'haves'. This is an urban problem. It gave us some causes to think about: densification of urban population, poverty, unemployment, exclusion and even the rise of 'revenge crime'. For poor children and teenagers, the possibility of living in a playful, healthy and easily-accessed educative environment is zero. This phenomenon keeps on recurring as the number of people living in rural area moving to urban area is increasing.
If we even have time to talk about the not-so-poor children and teenager, they are also affected because the density of Yogyakarta and the needs of land barely left them with a proper place to play and interact with their friends. It is such a lost, because playing activity is a stimulant to build these youngsters' vision of their future life.
As an intensifier is the fact that Yogyakarta is also famous for its higher-level education institutions. So famous, it is called as "The City of Students". It absorb students from almost every province in Indonesia and that including myself, originally came from Balikpapan, second biggest city in East Kalimantan province. In my hometown, we have this similar problem but not as intense as in Yogyakarta. As I myself is one of young people, the challenge that we have to overcome-in order to be included in the urban problem issue-is to break through the Spartan-concrete wall of a common cliché: "A belief that maturity and competency are merely based on how long a person had spent time in the surface of our beloved Earth". The other is the ongoing birth of apathetic young people, indulged by the consumptive-driven niche.
But then, I had the chance to witness the not ignorant young souls, helping rural people develop by utilizing theirs and their environment potential. I should say that the solution brought up in this essay might works in a different way. Instead of only dealing with urban space, this solution emphasizing on how important it is to also make the rural people realize the worth-livingness of their rural space. This is crucial since the biggest issue that has to be addressed is urbanization. It is not merely about hampering people to come to the city, but more as to facilitate the willingness of rural citizen to improve their quality, so they won't have to be the victim of city's Kraken-like hardship.
It started with a class project in my campus. I belong to a group which had the obligation to observe the way people in Yogyakarta city, respectively, build their distinct resistance strategy in dealing with the likely impact of globalization. We found a place called ViaVia Traveller's Café which also acted as the office of ViaVia Resto-Travel. It is actually a branch of Living Stone, a transnational tourism institution from Belgium. What makes this joint distinct is the insistence of not acting as' McViaVia 'but solely as' ViaVia Yogyakarta '. It practices the idea of' linking 'by Brecher and Costello who derived inspiration from the worldly renown "Gulliver's Travel".
The member of this body is young people mostly came from Yogyakarta itself and also those who believe that rural citizen has the not-yet-actualized potential. If that potential is developed and functionalized, it will certainly be a good motivator for people to stay in rural area - for a good and make sense causes. ViaVia build bridges that link people in urban place to enjoy and respect the rural lives through activities as bicycle riding tour, traditional herb course, religion tour, agriculture tour, etc - all of them are held in villages close to Yogyakarta city which often gives the urban area an additional 'population'. It help rural citizen to interact with people, manage financial issue (since they earn income from these activities), maximize their environment potential with sustainable manner and even train them with simple English for conversational use.
In the end of my class project, we heard confession that opened our eyes: a man who decided to return to his village after five years struggling in the city. He saw opportunities, and most importantly, hopes, from such program. It gave him the live that he expected; with dignity, respect and citizenship. Not only had he returned, he also brought back some of his friends to the village who also used to lived in the city. This is clear: even though this might be a little thing for urban citizen, it is a huge change for the rural people. It could be a great solution for the municipal and city government before they decided to manage city space, which in the case of my country, often turn into a forced eviction case.
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