Depok-Situ Cisanti (Cisanti Lake), or also known as Kilometer 0 of the Citarum River, is one of the destinations that is a tourist attraction for Tarumajaya Village, Kertasari District, Bandung Regency. Not only offers natural beauty, Cisanti Lake also has its own historical story. Besides Cisanti Lake, there are a number of other tourism potential points owned by Tarumajaya Village, namely Bukit Paesan (Paesan Hill), Hutan Bongkor (Bongkor Forest), TaWiDes (Taman Wisata Edukasi Desa) (Village Educational Tourism Park), Pakawa (Paniisan Karuhun Wah Yang), Tugu Lima Helm (Five Helmet Monument), and Curug Lodaya (Lodaya Waterfall). Every tourist area also has its own historical story which is unique and has advantages to be explored and told further.
The uniqueness and advantages of these tourist destinations encourage the UI Vocational community service team to provide podcasting and audio storytelling training to the Smart Village Information Community (KIM) Tarumajaya Village as a promotional effort through optimizing historical stories from each tourist destination. Currently, audio format content is becoming a new medium for delivering information, especially during this pandemic. Information distributed through podcasts is very diverse, ranging from news, entertainment, education, and even tourism. It has become the interest of the service team to share knowledge about how to make podcasts, especially those with the historical tourism theme.
“Along with the development of these tourist destinations, of course I have to prepare social media facilities that can promote these tourist destinations,” said Ahmad Iksan, Head of Tarumajaya Village who very much welcomed the training program provided by the UI Vocational Community Service team. With several of potential tourist destinations that exist, it cannot be denied that currently social media plays an important role in promotional efforts, including for tourism promotion, especially historical tourism.
This Community Service was held on Saturday (04/12) and the training was divided into three sessions covering introduction to mastery of podcast production practices. The materials presented included training on Podcasting skills by UI Vocational Multimedia Broadcasting lecturer Peny Meliaty Hutabarat M.S.M and materials related to the introduction of Podcasts by Melisa Bunga Altamira, M.Si. Both of these materials explain the importance of writing skills, natural writing of scripts, and storytellingskills. The presentation of the material was then closed with a podcast production mastery practice session delivered by the UI student team, Rahmadiyanti Alivia (UI Vocational), Khalisha Shafa Fawzya (FEB UI), and Aulia Azzahra (UI Vocational).
One of the participants in this training, Gus Kamajaya, expressed his pleasure to be able to take part in this training. He realized that shared skills such as writing and storytelling skills that were not yet possessed were indispensable in composing an interesting podcast. “Thank you, we have been given new knowledge regarding this podcast from the UI Vocational Team. Please continue to accompany us until it becomes a digital-based tourism village,” he said.
This community service program is carried out as a form of UI’s contribution to the development of the country through improving people’s welfare. Deni Danial Kesa, Ph.D, Manager of Human Resources, Research, and Community Service of UI Vocational, as well as a service team. Conveying that UI Vocational with UI, is committed to presenting sustainable community service programs so that benefits can be felt and independence can be formed. Digital-Based Tourism Village is a big idea that is passed down into sustainable programs.
“In the second year of this development, Tarumajaya Village has arrived at the promotion phase so that podcasts are one of the promotional channels that we want to become a characteristic of this region. Previously, coaching for Village Owned Enterprises (BUMDES) had also been carried out. Having lecturers and students with various backgrounds in the field of science so that the program can be carried out in synergy and sustainably. The existence of this podcast is expected to be a good start in creating digital-based tourism village promotions,” said Deni.
In line with what was said by Deni, “Podcasts will be very effective in attracting tourists’ interest because stories are arranged to build more curiosity so that potential tourists are encouraged to visit and experience firsthand. Podcasts are also not widely used by tourism developers so that will be the advantage of this village. After the training, the community will be given assistance in producing the Tarumajaya Village Podcast as a historical tour,” said Peny, head of the community service team.
Ahmad also conveyed his gratitude as the Head of Tarumajaya Village for the implementation of the podcast and audio storytelling training that was carried out. “We thank you for the training opportunities that have been given to us. This must be in line with when we built, podcasts must also help and support us, our team must also be ready to all support our programs, so that our society will be more prosperous, advanced, and independent,” said Ahmad.
