About us

For over 10 years our innovative project has promoted intercultural dialogue through its collaborative nature, allowing an open and respectful exchange between scientists and physicians from Indonesian institutions, namely from Yogyakarta and Yogyakarta Province and their colleagues at institutions in Austria. These fruitful interactions between individuals from different cultural backgrounds, groups and organizations, including social scientists, doctors, cancer researchers and students, have led to a deep understanding of diverse practices and perspectives, not only overcoming intercultural barriers between these groups, but also between local communities with regards to sociocultural aspects and holistic health awareness. This process has fostered mutual understanding and has been the driving force for great achievements. Particularly our work in the field of Global Citizenship Education, Women’s Health and in the field of prevention and early diagnosis of cancer has made a significant difference in an underserved area of a low-middle income country. As a project team we regard intercultural dialogue as a process that fosters equality and positive change and we strove at all stages of our project to introduce changes that are sustainable. We have conducted exchange programmes for staff and students, kindly supported by the ASEA-Uninet Collaborative, and we ran projects in the field of Global Citizenship Education, Women’s Health and the early diagnosis of Head and Neck Cancer that had tangible benefits for the local population of the Yogyakarta Province. The local people, students, staff and patients are our main target groups. By reaching out to them through global citizenship education, sociocultural awareness campaigns, cancer screening and holistic health promotion, not only has everyone working on this project been able to foster and promote creative processes, intercultural understanding and dialogue, but we also have had an impact on local communities, e.g. we supported the screening of more than 2500 women for cervical cancer via the Yogyakarta Women’s Health Initiative (one of our initiatives).

Our project operates in Yogyakarta Province (Central Java) which is one of the most multicultural regions of whole Indonesia. It is also an area in which many cultural barriers have to be tackled in order to decrease both maternal mortality (National statistics: 320 deaths per 100,000 live deliveries compared with 4 deaths per 100,000 in Austria) and mortality from gynaecological cancer. Many such barriers lead to many patients presenting at very advanced stages of malignant disease and treatment at this point is often limited to palliative measures only. There is a potential to detect cancer at an earlier stage through health education, awareness and screening programmes. One of our main aims has been to improve the situation by tackling the lack of effective patient education, improving family physicians’ and patients’ awareness through awareness campaigns based on the principles of intercultural dialogue. This has helped to run local programmes more effectively. Screening programmes and the donation of modern equipment, such as endoscopes, which allow early detection of cancers in district general hospitals has further supported our project. In summary, the project responds to significant needs and challenges of the population in an underserved area in the developing world while fostering intercultural dialogue, understanding and principles of Global Citizenship through scientific exchange. This innovative, collaborative project has focused on 3 key areas. Firstly, the promotion of intercultural dialogue and exchange, overcoming barriers and Global Citizenship Education. Secondly, on Women’s Health awareness with understanding of sociocultural aspects. Thirdly, the reduction of mortality rates from cervical cancer and head and neck cancer and cancer research. These three elements have brought about change, achieved intense intercultural dialogue, and have facilitated the exchange and understanding of the principles of Global Citizenship which has significantly contributed to its sustainability.