This week, I interviewed a friend of mine, Danurdoro who is the president of Indonesian Students Association in D.C. Area. I asked him why cultural bazaar is important for young generation. He said that pop culture influences young generation in so many ways so he think that cultural bazaar is important because it exposes the importance of cultural heritage to the young people. It is also important to help them see the richness of Indonesian culture, knowing the fact that there are many traditional ethnics in Indonesia.

As the president of a youth organization, he believes that his organization and he have created events that pretty much brought up a sense of appreciation to Indonesia. One of the events is called movie night where they showed quality Indonesian movies. They also worked together with the Indonesian embassy during embassy’s open house. Danurdoro believes that the movie night particularly is a good way to remind Indonesian students of their home country because in the movie everything is Indonesian, for example the actors, language, setting and attitude of the characters. He knows that students love that because it’s a fun thing to watch movie together.

However, from his observation, he thinks that compare to other form of Indonesian culture; food is the more popular form because it’s something that people can taste.

Danurdoro believes that so far Indonesian cultural event has not yet targeted enough young people because there is a huge gap between the younger and older generation. In the United States there are too many older Indonesians but very few young Indonesians. So there’s only a small group of young people that can be targeted.

So, he suggested that in order to improve Indonesian events, the committee should include more people from different age groups and class.

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