Kedondong Village Top 5 in Provincial Gotong Royong Competition
Madiun (15/5/23). Indonesia is closely related to cultural values, one of which is Gotong Royong. Gotong royong itself can be interpreted as doing something together. Gotong royong has been a habit since the time of our ancestors. This activity is estimated to have existed since 2000 BC or precisely around the 1800s. When the Europeans came to Indonesia, the Indonesian people had already done gotong royong to complete work for common purposes, for example repairing irrigation channels. The activity aims to strengthen the relationship between neighbors so that it will feel like a family. In Javanese proverbs, gotong royong can be said "Sepi ing pamrih, Rame ing gawe" which means someone who does not talk much, but is active in activities.
Gotong royong is also often associated with the National Social Solidarity Day seen from its history after Indonesia's independence in 1945, Indonesian people must continue to struggle and try to maintain their independence because the Dutch do not want to recognize Indonesia's sovereignty just like that. This certainly caused a lot of social problems in Indonesian society. Seeing the many social problems, in July 1949 the Ministry of Social Affairs held counseling for community leaders in Yogyakarta, because at that time Yogyakarta was the capital of Indonesia. The Ministry of Social Affairs considered that at that time solidarity and care in the community must continue to grow and survive so that Indonesia can maintain its sovereignty, lest these social problems actually damage the sovereignty of the Indonesian nation. Based on this, the Ministry of Social Affairs established Social Day or National Social Solidarity Day on December 20, 1949. This illustrates that the Indonesian people have a spirit of solidarity, unity, mutual cooperation, and kinship.
In this day and age, perhaps mutual cooperation is no longer fighting against invaders with weapons or exchanging necessities for survival. If the scope is further reduced, gotong royong can be associated with activities such as cleaning the neighborhood, building culverts, building irrigation fields, and many more. There is also what is called modern gotong royong. This kind of mutual cooperation is certainly familiar to us because we are very often encountered on digital platforms, such as online donations through websites that we often encounter. With these online donations, people who are very far from the location can still provide assistance in the form of money to solve a problem. For example, the earthquake in Palu that happened a few years ago. Many volunteers opened donations on several online donation websites, so that people who wanted to help victims did not need to be confused anymore. In 2018, Kitabisa.com managed to collect donations of Rp.490 billion from 17 thousand available fundraisers based on the Indonesia Online Giving Report. Â This proves that the awareness of online donations is highly utilized and trusted by the community and is also one of the important aspects of community mutual cooperation at this time.
Gotong royong is also not said to be a trivial old thing. This activity always exists even today. A real example can be seen in Kedondong Village, Kebonsari District, Madiun Regency. The residents of Kedondong Village came together to carry out gotong royong activities contested by the Madiun District Government, and successfully passed representing Madiun District to go to the East Java Provincial level. With 23 districts and cities participating in the competition, Kedondong Village became one of the 5 best villages nominated for the best gotong royong implementer in East Java, because during the administrative assessment, Kedondong Village managed to carry out activities related to the values of mutual cooperation very well, so it is not surprising that Kedondong Village deserves to be nominated. Various assessment criteria including community, economy, socio-culture and religion as well as the environment of Kedodong Village were able to prove that they deserved to be in the top 5 in this gotong royong competition.
From the picture above is one of the evidences of community aspects that can be assessed well, seen from the enthusiasm of the people who took part in the competition activities. The elders who proudly enlivened the village competition assessment event with legendary Javanese songs. Not only that, the youth of Kedondong Village also performed with the original Madiun Dongkrek art to show that the Kedodong Village community still holds tightly to the culture that exists in Madiun itself. The unique thing in the excitement of the village competition is the Papuan students who want to work together to get plus points from the judges. These students were brought directly from Papua to study at SMKN 1 Kebonsari. It is worthy of thumbs up for these Papuan students, because even though they are not native to Kedondong Village they want to work together for the sake of the village they live in today.
The mutual cooperation of the Kedondong Village community is extraordinary, because they have a work product in the form of shoes and sandals which is the original product of the Kedondong Village community with a brand that mentions "WATU LESUNG KEDONDONG" on the shoe base, which Watu Lesung is one of the hamlets in Kedondong Village. The community strongly supports local products from their area by buying their own local products. With quality that is no less good than other well-known brands. It can be seen from this that community cooperation is able to help the economy of the Kedondong Village community itself.
