Makassar International Writers Festival 2019

As every year, we sponsored and participated in Makassar International Writers Festival (MIWF) in 26-29 June 2019.

MIWF started in 2011 as peoples’ oriented festival as gathering of Indonesian and overseas writers and poets with a lot of kind of interested sessions to present new books by the authors or discuss about many topics related to history, current affairs, and future peoples’ oriented community life.

In MIWF 2019, we had a session about Kikigaki (listening and writing) as titled “Story Telling, Disaster and Resilience”. We invited Prof. Motoko Shimagami (Ehime Univ) as coordinator of transfer of Kikigaki Program origined from Japan to Indonesia, Dr. Zaenal Abidin (IPB) as coordinator of Kikigaki Program in Indonesia, Ibu Risna Abbas (teacher of SMAN 2 Banawa, Donggala) as educator for Kikigaki group in her highschool, Dr. Lilan Dama (LPPM UNG) as coordinator in Gorontalo, and three young participants of Kikigaki program (Mr. Reza, Ms. Fira, and Ms. Putri).

In our session, we introduced about Kikigaki with focusing how Kikigaki is different from ordinary interview and hearing. Three young participants of Kikigaki program testified their experiences and their own changes through Kikigaki program.

During our Kikigaki session, we could present the meaning and importance of Kikigaki for Indonesia in the context of environmental conservation, local wisdom, and inter-generational trust building.

We want to say thank you for MIWF 2019 and Ms. Lily Yulianti as chief coordinator of this event to give us very good opportunity to discuss about Kikigaki program with many audience.