Sub-unit Coordinator, KKN PPM UGM 2023 – YO068 @Cangkringan Yogyakarta, Indonesia – Jun to Aug 2023
KKN PPM UGM 2023: community service in Cangkringan
KKN PPM UGM Cangkringan is UGM’s mandatory community service program. Cangkringan sits on the slopes of Mount Merapi, a sub-district still shaped by the 2010 eruption. Its tourism-dependent villages were rebuilding both their economy and their digital presence, largely from scratch. As Sub-unit Coordinator, I owned how our student unit’s projects actually landed with the community. It was not just about what we planned on paper before arriving.
- As part of KKN PPM UGM 2023, I executed a community service program at Universitas Gadjah Mada, promoting tourism by developing CangkringanCeria.com and digitizing local businesses through Google Maps listings, including creating new entries, updating profiles, and adding reviews to enhance visibility.
- I conducted workshops for elementary and high school students on life skills, hygiene practices, and environmental awareness.
Building trust one village at a time
Building CangkringanCeria.com meant sitting down with local business owners who often had never had a Google Maps listing, let alone a dedicated website. Together, we figured out what information actually mattered to a visitor deciding whether to stop at their stall or homestay. This process moved much slower than any client project I had worked on before. I had to build trust village by village, conversation by conversation. Only then did people feel comfortable putting their business online, which is the part of KKN PPM UGM Cangkringan that never shows up in a report.
What two months could and could not change
The workshops with elementary and high school students were a different kind of work entirely. However, they reinforced the same idea: community programs only matter if they are built around what people actually need, not what looks good in a final report. Two months was not long enough to change much on its own. Still, it was enough to leave behind a working website, a stronger digital footprint for local businesses, and, I hope, a few kids who remember the hygiene and environmental sessions longer than they remember who ran them. This KKN PPM UGM 2023 placement sits alongside other community work built the same way: slowly, and from the ground up.