Yogyakarta, October 16th 2020—In this 2020, International Relations Students Corps or KOMAHI UGM held an International Relations English Competition event for the first time. This was an annual competition event that was held by KOMAHI since 2013. In this eighth year, IREC raised the big theme ‘Advancing Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Development to Achieve the 2030 Agenda’ and opened four branches of competition for all high school students and their equivalents, such as peech, storytelling, debate, and news casting competitions.
As the beginning of the entire series of events, IREC also held an opening session consisting of an opening ceremony and material from two key speakers, Aghnia Dima and Tirza Listiarani, which was delivered entirely in English. The event started with a brief explanation from the presenter regarding the overview of IREC 2020. Video remarks from several committee representatives were then shown on the Zoom Meeting platform screen in the opening ceremony session.
With the official opening of IREC 2020, the two presenters then introduced a moderator who would guide the material session from key speakers, Reina Kato, a student of the Department of International Relations. After taking over the event, Reina started the material session by briefly introducing the two key speakers.
The first keynote speaker who delivered the material was Aghnia Dima, with the subject ‘SDGs and Sustainable Economic Development’. In her material, Dima explained a lot about SDGs in general and their relevance to current conditions, especially during the pandemic. In accordance with the theme of the material, Dima also explained SDGs issues and their relation to the economy, especially sustainable economies. Ending the explanation, Dima gave a motivational quote for the participants regarding it is now the time for young people to become a solution to existing problems.
The next explanation from Tirza List Terbangi was a kind of continuation from Dima’s motivational quote. With material titled as ‘Youth and SDGs’, Tirza started the material by holding games for all participants through the Mentee website. In this game, Tirza gave some simple questions about the areas where the participants came from, whether they already know the SDGs or not, and one word for young people. Back to the material, Tirza displayed a picture showing that inequality is still clear in Indonesia. In line with the material topics she brought, Tirza explained a lot about why the role of young people is important and the roles that can be played by young people in pursuing SDGs.
The material session was continued with a question and answer session which was greeted enthusiastically by the participants—many participants left their questions in the comments column. After the last question was answered by the keynote speaker, the moderator gave a souvenir from the committee in the form of an illustration of the two speakers. By giving virtual souvenirs through the display of illustrations on the Zoom Meeting screen, the moderator returned the event to the presenters. Before moving on to the break session which was then continued with coaching and technical meeting of the competition participants, the presenter invited all participants to take pictures together. The opening session of the IREC series of events was closed around 02.30 p.m.