IFSA Flying Bike

International Day of Forest is the biggest day in forestry sector which is celebrated every March 21st. This year, IFSA LC UGM (Universitas Gadjah Mada) was kicking this year off by conducting youth campaign to celebrate International Day of Forest (IDF). On March 29th, IFSA LC UGM members, with hundred UGM students were biking along 10 kilometers while doing silent campaign. We put “Raising Awareness of Local People Towards Forest and Environment” as our theme of this IDF celebration. As we know that most people in this world, including Indonesians, still do not aware about the importance of forest sustainability. Most of them only think that nature is renewable resources that will not ever be used up to be exploited.

In this activity, the participants were bringing posters which contained quote related to International Day of Forest, the importances of forest, the impacts of degradation and deforestation, persuade people to save the forest such as “forest produce oxygen to human breath; 5 trees for 1 human each day; water was free in the past but now we buy, oxygen is free today but probably in the future we will buy; forest prevent fertile soil; forest save our water surface; let’s love our children and grandchildren by maintaining our forest and environment; forest is our hope”, etc. We were riding and sounding the bicycles’ bell along the road passed the tourism places in Yogyakarta such as Malioboro, King’s Palace, Vredeberg, and other crowded places. Fortunately, the people gave high appreciation to us by paying attention, reading our posters, even taking photos of us then published it in local media. Besides, we were also distributing stickers to the public to persuade them in keeping sustainability of forest. In the end of this activity, we gathered in Forestry Faculty of UGM, we played some games and distributed some books about forest and forestry to the participants.