Many non-Indonesian, who are not familiar about Indonesia, often thinks that Indonesia is just Bali or Java. Probably only a small number of people know that Indonesia is a huge country made up of around 17,500 of volcanic islands, home to hundreds of ethnic groups speaking around 700 different languages. Now, that is impressive, even just talking about the number of islands, ethnic groups and languages it has. What you don’t really know is that each of this island may have several different ethnic groups each with their own culture and tradition. It is rather sad if until now, you only know Indonesia as Java and Bali.
On 29th November 2014, Connect Indonesia, supported by 91 volunteers from all over the UK and some came as far as the Netherlands, gathered together and successfully created an amazing cultural evening to promote and celebrate Indonesia’s cultural diversity. Now, for a tiny charity like Connect Indonesia, The Charity, that is truly impressive. We think so anyway.
The evening was attended by over 350 people and packed with cultural entertainments to represents culture from many regions of Indonesia.
Our sincere gratitude to all our volunteers who have made this event possible:
- The Lila Bhawa Indonesian Dance Group, UK http://lilabhawa.org/ for their amazing Indonesian traditional dance performances
- Ina Dance from the Netherlands for their amazing Indonesian dance performances http://welkom.inadance.nl/
- Balinese Gamelan performance by the Lila Cita Gamelan Group, for their gamelan performances http://www.lilacita.com/
- The Indonesian Student Association, New Castle, for their dance performance
- The Indonesia-UK group for their West Sumatra dance performance
- The Bonapasogit Singers for their Batak Folk music performances.
- David Harry of the Illusionist for his magic performances. www.thedelusionist.com
- Leny McDonnell of Kebaya Lence, Julia Sukimin of Kebaya Design, and Enggi Holt of House of Nusa Ina for their participation in our
traditional fashion show. - Warung Windsor for their catering provision to some of our volunteers.
- The Indonesian Student Association London, for their amazing support
- Stella, and Steven Marcelino for their amazing MC talents.
- The stall holders who had enliven the evening with amazing food, arts & craft display
- And everyone who has contributed so much to the success of the cultural evening. Thank you, everyone.