WHY NOT SRI LANKA? සිංහල

Starter Kit. Idea 367 of 500. Cluster 18

Family-roots trips for the second generation: the grandparents' village traced, visited and explained

Back to the idea

Written for this site as a starting point, not from the book. Rules and fees change: ask the bodies named below before you spend money.

The mechanism, from the book

1.5 million people abroad who know how rich countries work, and who send home money and little else.

The first step

Ask 3 families abroad whose children were born there whether they would pay to have the grandparents' village traced and a day there arranged: the house, the school, the place of worship, and an older neighbour who remembers the family. Do the research for one family, write it up in 4 pages with photographs, and price the day. A family that books the trip is the proof.

Who pays first
A parent abroad whose children know the grandparents' village only as a name, and who wants them to stand in it once.
What leaves today
The second generation loses the thread to the island, and with it the visits, the money and the interest that might have come home later.

Ask first

  • Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a guided family trip sold abroad must go through a registered operator.
  • the Divisional Secretariat. Ask which records in the division can help a family find its old village and land.

Check before you spend

That every family story is checked with living relatives before the trip, the family's consent to what is shared, and travel insurance for the group.

Find out these three numbers

  1. What would a family abroad pay for a traced and guided roots trip?
  2. How many families in one association abroad would book first?
  3. How long does tracing one village usually take?

A comparison from the book

My parents in Switzerland. Chapter Eight

"They went, they saw, and they thought again"

Seeing a place in person changes how people feel about it; the second generation is no different.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

WITH500BUSINESS IDEASTO STARTTOMORROW

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.