Starter Kit. Idea 466 of 500. Cluster 25
Cricket academies for the children of Sri Lankans abroad and the world's, in the school holidays
The mechanism, from the book
The country's best-known export is cricket, and little of the business around it is built at home.
The first step
Write a one-page offer for a 2-week holiday cricket camp: dates, daily schedule, the coaches' credentials, lodging and a price in £. Send it to the secretaries of 3 Sri Lankan cricket clubs abroad and ask each to forward it to the parents in their junior section. Ask for a refundable deposit to hold a place. Ten deposits, or a list of parents who say they would pay, tells you the camp is real.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan parent abroad who wants their child to play serious cricket in the school holidays and to spend them among family on the island.
- What leaves today
- The island's cricketing name is spent abroad, and the fees and holiday spending of young players go to academies in other countries.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a residential holiday camp for visiting children can be registered as a tourist service.
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what the lodging and kitchen must meet to house visiting children.
Check before you spend
Confirm safeguarding checks for every coach, written consent from each parent, insurance for the children and their travel, and lodging that meets health rules.
Find out these three numbers
- What would parents abroad pay for a holiday camp?
- How many children would one club abroad send?
- What do coaches, lodging and grounds cost for the camp?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lankans abroad. Chapter Two
"most of whom would help if anybody asked them properly"
Clubs abroad are full of Sri Lankan parents. Ask them properly and they are the first customers.
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.