THE ENTHUSIASM OF ANNUAL DIVERSITY EVENT: ICAC 2024

Source : LPM Campus

Sukoharjo, LPM Campus – Wednesday (10/6), this year, the ICAC event took place at
Djazman Hall, Muhammadiyah Surakarta University. ICAC or International Cultural and
Academic Competition is basically an annual event to facilitate interaction and networking
opportunities through diverse backgrounds of international students which is held by International
Office of Muhammadiyah Surakarta University.

This ICAC 2024 event is the third annual event. International students who participated in
this event not only came from UMS or around the city of Surakarta, but students from other cities
just like Bandung, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Surabaya who came from assortment of universities
were involved. This event is indeed a gathering place for international students in Indonesia to
engage in some activities. “In addition to facilitating interactions between international students,
interactions between local students and international students are also important because access to
visiting abroad cannot be felt by all local students,” said Arkan, chairman of the ICAC event
committee.

The difference between this and last year’s ICAC event is the aspect that be focused on by
the organizer. This year, ICAC is more focused on the performance of cultural aspects, while last
year it focused on each two aspects, it was cultural aspects and academic aspects. Following to the
focus of the event, which is culture, this year ICAC carries the theme Colors of the World: Building
Friendships and Creating Cross-Cultural Memories. This year event gained so much enthusiasm
by the guests and contestants.

Here, each country involved have specialty about food and culture characteristics. We met
one of our international student from Tunisia, said that the food and culture were what impresses
her to gain experiences about knowing more about other countries also to make some friends
through the sharing time. She met new friends from Pakistan, Malaysia, Yemen, and even
Indonesia. She said, “Indonesia is a very friendly country, evidenced by the visitors who were very
polite towards us. We ourselves are reluctant and really appreciate the actions of Indonesian
people,” and that she hopes this kind of event will occur in the next years.

As a Tunisian student, she was so excited to share about Tunisian dish and cloth to every
visitors. Tunisia has Sahara desert that we all might have already known about. In her stand, it was
decorated to represent what is Tunisian consume in a day, just like Fricasse, Menchouia, and
Shakshuka. Menchouia is one of the top 3 traditional salad in the world, the taste is similar with
“gado-gado” with a twist, it is a little spicy. One portion of Menchouia weighed around 250 grams.
Meanwhile, Shakshuka is a main dish in Tunisia served with fried eggs and cooked with tomato
sauce, chili, onion, pepper, cumin, and many more. There were also Fricasse which is a Tunisia’s
sandwich combined with boiled eggs, tuna, harissa, and others equipped with Tunisia’s sauce. It
all presented in her Tunisia stand.

Then, there was one of informatics engineering students as a local student who got to know
about the event from ICAC Instagram account, she was thrilled to looking for various foods from
each country that contributed to this event. Later she found many foods from various countries
with various cultures. She choose Chad stand as her favorite ones.

Despite having several obstacles in organizing this ICAC event, such as the formation of
the entire committee which was formed only within one month before the event was held, but this
event can still run properly. “Even so, if the preparation had gone better beforehand, maybe the
event would have been more organized,” said Arkan, chairman of the ICAC event committee. Next
year he hopes the event can run with the same enthusiasm as this year which even has the
possibility to be held in a larger venue, namely Edutorium UMS so it is hoped that it will be more
festive and will get the wider target participation internationally.

Writer : Naira Afza Salsabila (Science of Nutrition’23)
Editor : Nada Utari Rusmanda (Dentistry’21)