The Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta DJ Brand Team, which is the Student Creativity Program for Community Service (PKM-M), has successfully passed the inspection by DIKTI and is receiving funding from DIKTI, after carrying out Training (Design, Sewing, and Branding) Strategies for Empowering Orphanages in the Millennial Era at the Darul Ulum Orphanage Yogyakarta. The UMY DJ Brand Team became one of the many PKM teams throughout Indonesia that submitted activity proposals to be funded by DIKTI.
Student creativity cannot be discouraged, even in a state of the COVID-19 pandemic. This activity was done by the UMY Brand DJ team, chaired by Enda Dwi Maisari (UMY Accounting Study Program student) and assisted by Dinda Fahira Salsabila (Accounting), Jejen Jaenul Haq (Government Science), Yusuf Latiefum Saputro (Economics), and Muhammad Miqdad Ghifar (Informatics), who carried out community service at the Darul Ulum Yogyakarta Orphanage.
The designing, sewing and branding training program conducted by the DJ Brand UMY team lasted for one month and started August 30. Due to the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic, this training was conducted online and went according to expectations. The choice of the orphanage as the target of this training is to train children to have skills, which can be useful because they do are not guaranteed higher education after graduating from high school, as said by Enda.
“This program is an innovation to increase the creativity of the nation’s children, including those in the Darul Ulum Yogyakarta Orphanage. We chose the Darul Ulum Orphanage as our partner because previously there had been no activities that could increase the creativity of the children. Meanwhile, there was no guarantee that they would receive higher education after they graduated from high school,” she said.
Of course, this training is not only aimed to provide facilities for orphanage children to understand how to design, sew, and then brand their products. The DJ Brand UMY team assisted the children so they can practice the activities themselves, so that the results of the progress of this training can be seen. “After being given training materials on design, sewing and branding, they could make hijab patterns, finished headscarves, and market them through social media such as Instagram,” Enda continued.
Enda hopes that the PKM-M program can provide benefits to the children of the orphanage. “They can increase their creativity and imagination and learn how to be smart millennials to do business. They can learn new things to make changes in today’s modern era which is full of challenges and they must have a good ability to compete,” she concluded.
There were 37 teams from UMY that passed and were funded by DIKTI, with different types of PKM. 3 teams in Entrepreneurship PKM, 12 PKM Karsa Cipta, 6 PKM-M, 8 PKM for Exact Research, 5 PKM for Social Humanities Research, and 3 PKM for Technology. (Hbb)
