Jurang Jero Tourism Forest is one of the national parks in the slopes of mount Merapi. It is located in Srumbung District Magelang Regency Central Java Province. Jurang Jero is one of new attractions that are started to be explored. Thanks to massive development that was carried out by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Mount Merapi National Park Office unit, there are many tourism potential worth to be developed. Unfortunately, it will be a challenging attempt on tourism management aspect due to low level education background for youth around Jurang Jero Forest. The lack of education has made them difficult to find the steady job. Therefore, a group of UNY students consist of Maulidah Nurul Kamaliyah, Annisa Salsabila and Kiki Kristanti from French Language Education Study Program, Dwijayanto Budi Prabowo from Civil Engineering Education and Planning Study Program, and Sri Wahyuningsih from Science Education Study Program challenged themselves to support empowering the youth around Jurang Jero forest to manage the tourism forest potential.
The team held a series of activities as an initial provision and to improve local wisdom and culture that can be turned on in subsequent development. According to Maulidah Nurul Kamaliyah, residents around Jurang Jero Tourism Forest need an understanding of how to improve the quality of youth to conserve forests.“This forest will have a new face as tourism destination. Therefore, we need to organize better the youth for productive work and long term tourism development,”Maulidah said. The empowerment program will help the village to preserve the forest and protect it from any unwanted exploitation based on local wisdom.
Annisa Salsabila explained that their programs are set for local youth in form of workshop and out bond activities.
The workshop was held on forest tourism through info session about the potential, conditions, and problems that exist in the tourism forest. This workshop also discusses local wisdom because Pule Hamlet is one of the main access roads to the tourist forest, so this workshop is needed to bring back local wisdom that is fading. Whereas outbound is held so that youth observe and discuss the condition of forests, forest problems and solutions to solve existing problems. This activity is carried out starting from Pule Hamlet up to the tourist forest. In addition, this stage stimulates youth to create programs related to forest conservation.
This activity won the Directorate of Higher Education funds in the Student Creativity Program in Community Service in 2019. (Dedy)
