Amor Festival, abbreviated as Amor Fest, is a literacy festival organized by Sekolah Asrama Taruna Papua in commemoration of the Month of Literacy and Sumpah Pemuda Day. This event involved every student in Sekolah Asrama Taruna Papua in various competitions and art performances. Art, language, and literacy are medium for students to express their intuition and develop ideas and aesthetic imagination while still upholding character and ethics in the forms of art works and cultural expressions. This way, the students’ characters are developed through healthy competition.

The Amor Festival series begins on October 1^st, 2022, with an opening service, followed by the preparation of students to take part in various competitions. The competition was participated by all students, starting from the selection between students which was held in each class with their homeroom teacher. The winning student from each class will represent the class to take part in the inter-class competition on October 15 and 17, 2022. Various competitions were held with a variety of categories for lower graders, higher graders, and junior high. The choices of various competitions to sharpen students’ skills in arts are poem reciting competitions, poem creation and reading competitions, Wisisi, Seka, and Yospan dance competitions, and choir competitions. Meanwhile, to sharpen the language skills, a word-spelling competition in local languages, namely Amungme and Kamoro, Indonesian and English, an English speech and English declamation competition, wall magazine competition, and reciting the 1945 Constitution were held. Fashion show competitions and product creation from used goods were also held to sharpen the creative power and confidence of the students.

Students’ art performances show was held to close the series of activities as well as to commemorate the Sumpah Pemuda Day, on October 28, 2022. The students performed in various collaborative works between motion, sound, and language skills. This collaborative work involved five hundred students as performers, stage crews, receptionists, and companions for lower grader students. Collaborative work is an effort to accommodate the various artistic talents of the students as well as to train them to work together, negotiate, and harmonize together during the practicing process and on-stage performance.

Amor Fest is a part of wholistic and fun learning processes for the Sekolah Asrama taruna Papua academic community; students, teachers, and staffs who come from various ethnic groups in Indonesia and also foreigner following the pattern of education in the Sekolah Asrama Taruna Papua, namely the Papuan contextual life-based curriculum. Amor Fest with theme “Bahasa Santun, Budaya Tangguh” accommodates various activities held throughout October 2022, emphasizes the rich cultural diversity in Indonesia. Let’s take a good care of our little Indonesia in Sekolah Asrama Taruna Papua! (Aloysia Fibriana & Angela Chuntala)