Starter Kit. Idea 199 of 500. Cluster 9
The same offer, with the same respect, for the Hindu temples, the mosques and the churches
The mechanism, from the book
What cannot be copied. Every competitor can build a beach hotel. No competitor can offer a Buddhist tradition more than 2,000 years old, still practised at the places where it first took root on the island.
The first step
Go to a kovil in the north or east, a mosque, or a church in Negombo, and ask its trustees, imam or parish priest what visitors get wrong and whether a written guide in English would help. Offer to write it for their approval at no cost, covering dress, times, what is open to visitors and what is not. The proof is one approved guide and permission to share it with guesthouses nearby.
- Who pays first
- A guesthouse or small hotel near the place of worship, which pays for the guide because its guests keep asking whether and how they may visit.
- What leaves today
- The island's Hindu, Muslim and Christian heritage is left out of most itineraries, so visitors never learn that the religious life here is plural and old.
Ask first
- Department of Cultural Affairs. Ask which places of worship already welcome visitors and want help explaining their practice.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether they list visitor information for kovils, mosques and churches.
Check before you spend
Whether the trustees, imam or parish priest agree to visitors and to your guide's wording, and what dress and visiting times they set.
Find out these three numbers
- How many visitors already come to each place of worship in a week?
- What do visitors most often get wrong when they visit?
- Which places would welcome the same programme on their own festival days?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"every kitchen on the island side by side, as one national inheritance"
Offer every faith's places with the same respect, side by side, as one inheritance.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.