School: SMA 1 PADANG
    PADANG, WEST SUMATRA, INDONESIA

4 students, ages 16-17 worked together to complete this Doors to Diplomacy project on February 18, 2009. They have participated in Doors to Diplomacy in the following year(s): 2009

Classes and Teachers: WIWI ROSARIA

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.sman1-pdg.sch.id

1. Description of Our Team

We are Minangkabau Team, from SMA 1 Padang, Indonesia, consist of 4 energetic, active, and creative students (Harris, Imre, Hany, and Fildzah), assisted genuinely by our teacher to complete our beneficial project entitled “ Preserving Arts and Culture of Minangkabau through Youth Activity”. Therefore, we divided our work so that we could use the time effectively. Imre, acted as the leader of our project, he is also responsible in managing the website and everything related with our publication such as uploading the photos, videos, etc, assited by our teacher. He worked in high spirit despite the difficulties found during running the project, his band was also sucessful become one of the finalists of a usic event in PAdang. Hany, an elegant girl who has the spirit of adventuring, seriously collecting the data from many resources including interview with the reliable experts in arts and culture to be used for our project. Besides, She actively socialized our project through several activities like exhibition and in the Conference for Global Issued held on March 7, 2009, where she acted as the Master of Ceremony of this event. Fildzah, a smart pretty girl who has been crowned as a smart queen and Harris crowned as the smart King in the election of UNI and Uda (King and Queen) of SMA 1 Padang., patiently handled arts and culture performance of SMA 1 Padang. Harris, contributed in collecting pictures and video of our projects to be published in our web, and he is also the leader of the student organisation at our school. In addition, this project can run smoothly due to the guidance of our teacher “Ms. Wiwi Rosaria” who has ever conducted several International projects, and attended several international conferences. She guided us in many things such as in designing WebPages, dealing with people, obtaining information, understanding and expressing the language accurately and appropriately, organizing an event, and so forth. So, in achieving the success of this project, every member in our team put all efforts, worked hardly, and used several strategies in order to all the goals can be reached in spite of the problems faced during conducting our project. All students and people involved in this project collaborated genuisely as volunteers to promote our arts and culture.

2. Summary of Our Project

“Preserving Arts and Culture” is the title of our project. This project promotes diverse arts and cultures from West Sumatra (Minangkabau), Indonesia. In this project, students conducted research related with arts and culture existed in Minangkabau, and activities in promoting arts and culture of Minangkabau. Presently, the youth tends to forget the values existed in their culture, and they forget to preserve the traditional arts and culture existed in their community. Herefore, the team of the project collected things related with the arts and culture of Minangkabau, and created an attractive book containing the information about arts and culture in Minangkabau, put the book in the librqary, and distributed the copies of this book to the youth in their local community so that all the young people recognize the arts and culture existed in their society. Besides, the team also organized exhibition about Arts and Culture to promote everything related with arts and culture of Minangkabau both at school and through internet (virtual exhibition) in order to the people around the world can recognize the arts and culture of Minangkabau, as a part of our promotion. In this book and website, the team share their works by showing photos and videos, and several essential information related with Arts and Culture of Minangkabau, West Sumatra-Indonesia. On March 7, 2009, we also organized a Conference for Global Issues, one of the theme was ARTS AND CULTURE. Thus, the other students, teachers, and people around the world, can recognize their own arts and culture as the asset of their country. Through these activities, the students improve their appreciation toward the importance of preserving arts and culture existed in their own community or country. This project apparently improve the awareness of young people to be more concern about arts and culture and teach them them to be a global citizen living a world which is full of challenges.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:21-50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:4-6

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):

Living in this sophisticated technology truly provides us with a number of useful things that can assist us in our daily life, our work can be finished in a short time, a lot of new technologies have been invented and people are adopting them fast. The computer we have, completed with internet access, do assist us in finishing our project and share our project world widely through the web pages we manage with the spirit of togetherness. Therefore, Door to Diplomacy has facilitated us globally to promote our arts and culture with the use of internet access available in our daily life.. We accessed the internet, learnt designing web pages and were able to present our project in form of website.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

The members of our team are active students of SMA 1 Padang who have many activities, and at the time we conducted the project, our school organized an event called SMANSA PADANG SCIENCE COMPETITION AND YOUTH CONFERENCE FOR GLOBAL ISSUES. All the members of our team involved in this event, they had to prepare many things to make the event run smoothly. Automatically, we got difficulty in managing the time for the meeting. However, we could solve the problems we faced, we arranged weekly meeting, every Friday afternoon we discussed several things related with our projects, guided by our teacher. Besides, we communicated each other through email and cell phone. So, everything could run smoothly though we didn’t meet everyday, but we can chat through internet and cell phone to discuss our project. Since we have many activities, we attempted to manage our time effectively and consumed nutritious food so that we could handle our project successfully without neglecting our studying hours. Sometimes, there were also problem with the server Connection speed that was too slow. However, we could overcome this problem by contacting our internet administrator

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Arts and culture are the valuable asset needed to be preserved due to their contribution in inspiring people to do something. Our life can’t be seperated from arts and culture, because arts and culture are one of identities of a country or a society and can be the DOor to Diplomacy. We can distinguish one country with another because of several traditional arts or culture existed in these places. For instace, if we see in a movie there are several pyramids shown, we can guess that this movie was taken place in Egypt due to the identical character of the ancient pyramids made by ancient people. Therefore “Let’s preserve our arts and culture through myriads of activities”. In short, this project has motivated school, students and people in our community to appreciate their own arts and culture due to the activities we organized and the collaboration we did with related parties

6. How did your activities and research for this Doors to Diplomacy Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Arts and culture are the valuable asset needed to be preserved due to their contribution in inspiring people to do something. Our life can’t be seperated from arts and culture, because arts and culture are one of identities of a country or a society. We can distinguish one country with another because of several traditional arts or culture existed in these places. For instace, if we see in a movie there are several pyramids shown, we can guess that this movie was taken place in Egypt due to the identical character of the ancient pyramids made by ancient people. Therefore “Let’s preserve our arts and culture through myriads of activities”. In short, this project has motivated school, students and people in our community to appreciate their own arts and culture due to the activities we organized and the collaboration we did with related parties that can bring us to the Door to Diplomacy

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your Doors to Diplomacy project?

In completing this project, Personal computers and laptops with the internet connection were the most useful tools where we could do entering, uploading the file , and downloading several supporting files to be used for supporting our project and publish our project. We also used several digital instruments such as digital cameras, and mobile phones for capturing the videos and pictures. Mobile phones were also used to communicate with our members if we were not at school. Moreover, we read books, magazines, newspaper, watched local TV screened arts and culture, visited museum to support our information and interviews the experts to get more information related with our project.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your Doors to Diplomacy project both on-line and in person.

Since we have a project about arts and culture, automatically we promote arts and culture of our country to the people around the globe through our Web site containing arts and culture of West Sumatra or Minangkabau, that can lead us to the Door to Diplomacy. Besides, we also created a book written in English containing about arts and culture of Minangkabau which is put in our own library to be read by the students at our school. By reading this book, the students can learn more about the arts and culture existing in Minangkabau that need to be preserved and promoted world widely because the arts and culture of a country is something precious, its our own identity and a valuable asset that can not be valued with money. Furthermore, we worked with the local people who work in the field of arts and culture to hold cultural event. WE also organized a conference for Global Issues, one of the issues discussed in this conference was about CULTURE. In this conference, we exposed our project so that many people can promote our culture as well.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

Firstly, this project has enlarged students’ knowledge about arts and culture of Minangkabau stimulate the people through the events organized at school such as art performance, art exhibition, and school visiting to the museum which can enhance students’ comprehension about the arts and culture of Minangkabau. This activities improve students awareness toward their surroundings which has various arts and culture. Moreover, this project has stimulated the youth youth both at school and our neighborhoods, to preserve their own arts and culture because presently many tenenagers tend to sing and dance modern songs and dances, they don’t like to perform their own culture. The web we created and the book we made also provided the information for our community about arts ad culture of Minangkabau. It’s obvious that through this project, the teenagers and the people in our community become more understand and appreciate their own traditional songs, dances, food, and the other related things which also drive them to promote their own culture.

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

In conducting this project, we also involved the other students at our school and to the students living near our houses who became volunteers. They helped us in collecting several information about arts and culture of Minangkabau. They helped us in getting information such as by giving us several photos related with arts and culture of Minangkabau, and then we scanned the photos to be uploaded to our web. Besides, our community also tried to organize several events related with the arts and culture of Minangkabau. The public at large was very developing as the global development. The students had regular meetings in extracurricular activivities in school and interacted with other community at Taman Budaya ( local theatre), where the traditional events often performed here.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

In conducting this project, we also involved the other students at our school and to the students living near our houses who became volunteers. They helped us in collecting several information about arts and culture of Minangkabau. They helped us in getting information such as by giving us several photos related with arts and culture of Minangkabau, and then we scanned the photos to be uploaded to our web. Besides, our community also tried to organize several events related with the arts and culture of Minangkabau. The public at large was very developing as the global development. The students had regular meetings in extracurricular activivities in school and interacted with other community at Taman Budaya ( local theatre), where the traditional events often performed here.