Jakarta, Kartunet.com - To commemorate World AIDS Day on December 1st and International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3rd, Kartunet Community (Kartunet.com), ASEAN Blogger Community (ABC), and the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized a sharing and discussion event. With the theme “Fostering Public Awareness of HIV/AIDS and Disability Campaigns through Blogging Media”, the event proceeded smoothly at the Training Center building of the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (December 1st).
Kartunet Community, as a community dedicated to empowering youth with disabilities, enlivened the event, which ran from 09:00 AM to 05:00 PM Western Indonesian Time, with various activities. These included an accessible game competition, the launch of Kartunet.com's theme song, and seminars and talk shows on the role of IT and public space accessibility for the realization of an inclusive society. Additionally, Kartunet also launched the Kartunet Blog Competition 2012 and the 'Gerakan Indonesia Nyaman' (Comfortable Indonesia Movement), which had been postponed for some time.
“We need togetherness, like bloggers from Kartunet or other bloggers,” explained Mursyid, the committee chairman, revealing his reason for combining the themes of HIV/AIDS and Disability in one event. He believes that by uniting bloggers to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and Disability issues through blog media, discrimination and negative stigma against these two community groups can be reduced.
Apparently, the accessible game competition organized by Kartunet Community garnered significant sympathy from bloggers. This was evident from the large number of participants, who were from non-visually impaired backgrounds. Mursyid himself admitted he was surprised when he first learned that visually impaired individuals could also operate computers and mobile phones, and even become bloggers. “This shows that there is truly no difference among us,” he said.
Approximately 138 blogger communities confirmed their attendance. These included Blogger Reporter, Komunitas Emak-Emak Blogger (Mothers' Blogger Community), Kompasiana, and Blog Detik. Despite coming from different communities, they mingled with each other. They learned together about HIV/AIDS and disability issues, with the hope that the knowledge they gained could be published on their respective blogs to educate the public. (RR)