Like many countries throughout the world, Indonesia has an incredibly serious problem with bullying and violence in schools. To combat the global menace that is affecting the physical and emotional well-being of so many students, Unicef launched a competition last year to find a hero capable of helping young people speak out against school violence. The UN agency recently announced that they had found their superhero in “Cipta”, a character created by Rizka, a 17-year-old high school student from South Sulawesi in Indonesia.
Rizka is the winner of Unicef’s School Superhero Comic Contest, which was launched in October at New York Comic-Con. The contest tasked entrants to “design their own comic superhero that will defeat The Silence and help keep children safe in school” — The Silence being a super-villain representing the forces that keep children from speaking out about bullies and school violence.
As announced on Unicef’s official Instagram page yesterday, Rizka’s entry beat out 3,615 submissions from over 130 countries. Her superhero, Cipta (which is also an Indonesian word for “create”), will star in her very own comic book that will be available in over 100,000 schools around the world.
As described in a press release from Unicef: “Rajwa, also known as Cipta, is a 15-year-old who can turn her drawings into real-life objects and control them to stop school violence. She gives her sketchbook to children who are afraid to speak up. In it, they can draw or write the object they want her to create and control. She draws and then spreads ‘sketch-birds’ across the community for children to write down their problems and send a message to her and whoever they would like.”
Cipta’s creator, Rizka, says she was inspired to keep drawing by someone in her life and so she hopes her drawing can inspire others as well. “I planned to create Cipta with a concept of fighting the silence with silence.”
To create the comic book that will later be distributed to schools around the world, Rizka will work with a professional team and receive a mentoring session from comic artist Gabriel Picolo.
Unicef says the full Rizka’s full-length comic book should be released in July 2019. We can’t wait to check it out!
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