Bringing travellers to lesser known places
To avoid the negative consequences of overtourism, we are constantly researching amazing places far from the crowd. Working with a number of local services providers, our team is dedicated to make sure the tours we co-create with our travellers spread the human and economic benefits of tourism to areas that are off-the-beaten-track and usually away from main tourist routes.
Yes, there is a life out of the Sigiriya-Kandy-Ella-Yala-Mirissa-Galle tour from December to March that most operators organize and we are on a mission to let travellers know about it!
Ratnapura, Belihuloya, Jaffna, Mullaithivu, Mannar, Bandarawela, Lunugamwehera, Batticaloa, are just a few examples of places well worth a visit and that might well become one of the stages of the tour you will enjoy with us…
We also are keen on letting know to potential travellers that Sri Lanka can nearly be a year-round destination, as long as you adapt the itinerary…
Since the North and East were the theater of the civil war between the Sri Lankan Governmental Forces and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), these regions are definitely “behind” other more developed areas in terms of tourism infrastructure.
What could be seen as a handicap is indeed also an opportunity…
Yes, the North and East are dotted with magnificent unspoilt beaches, amazing lagoons, picturesque villages, where there are possibilities to develop responsible tourism services that will be more respectful of Nature and Communities, now that the Humanity has acknowledged the importance of preserving them.
So… we have created a facebook page to promote these lesser known areas, named Welcome to… the East and the North of Sri Lanka!
Being settled in the beautiful city of the singing fish, i.e. Batticaloa, on the Eastern coast, we also play our part in promoting tourism in our district, by offering through our website www.welcometobatticaloa.com, as its motto says, “all you need to know to enjoy your stay in Batticaloa district”.
By giving this information, we hope travellers will consider adding Batticaloa in their itineraries… We also offer tourism tips and a map of Batticaloa to all travellers reaching us out.
Supporting local livelihood opportunities in tourism
As the adage suggests, rather than giving a man a fish, it is better to teach him fishing, so he can look after himself and his family everyday. In our field, it is no different… Give a family the means to get involved in tourism, this will improve their income, so they can fulfill their needs by working…
We have equipped different families with the needed equipment and a bit of training so they could offer services to travellers.
Cooking classes have been one joyful way to improve the livelihood of our female chefs…
In 2015-16, we got funds from AusAid (Australian Aid), through I.L.O. (International Labour Organization) to increase and improve our work in community tourism in Batticaloa.
We spent part of these funds in supporting 11 families to provide homestay services to travellers.
How we usually support homestays is explained here.
Learning a lot from this experience, we were well prepared to do the same when one of our staff members asked us to help her welcoming travellers at her home.
In 2022, we together turned 2 rooms of her family home in a homestay than can now welcome 4 to 5 travellers.
Our company bore the construction and equipment cost, while the family members participated in the needed painting and labour work.
This is how, by a common labour of love and patience, Pavviya’s Beach Homestay was born…
Contributing positively to our environment
Collecting funds…
As explained in our Responsible Tourism Policy, we collect from our travellers a social contribution, which is 1% of the amount they pay for their tours with us. It also happens that some of our guests, knowing that we support local families, donate small funds to support our work. We might also collect donations online in case of disaster.
Additionally, we spend a part of our company’s income to contribute positively to our natural and social environment.
Helping little dreams come true…
Being settled in a village, we often hear about situations where a rather small financial support would help a person, a family or a group of people to make a cherished dream come true. Though we have limited resources and are not able to support all requests, we try our best to help little dreams come true…
Whether it is a talented student needing an instrument to rehearse at home, or a little girl impatient to learn traditional dance… we’ll try to help so that the economic struggle of their families does not prevent their passion to bloom…
It might happen on our own funds, or by linking a donor with the person in need of support.
In 2023, we could support our Vipulananda school band to repair their instruments and participate in the local band competition. Some funds we invested in these amazing youth, some funds were sent from a donor abroad after we requested support online
We are also regularly approached by village groups and societies looking for financial support of local events.
It could be a sports tournament organized by our village cricket and football clubs, or a food distribution on the Tsunami memorial day, or the celebration of the Teachers’ day at our village school…
These different functions are an important part of the cultural life of local communities, a source of enjoyment for all and golden occasions to be together on a special day…
Providing financial support to people or local groups in need…
The funds we have been collecting since the creation of our company have also been used to help affected people in critical situations, by, for example,
- Providing basic items to flood victims following appeals to donations made by the local government
- Giving a financial support to some of the injured victims of Easter Sunday bomb blast in Batticaloa
- Buying fresh vegetables and fruits from local farmers and donating them to families without livelihood during Covid-19 epidemics
- Paying partly the utility bills of some of our partner families when their income was insufficient to avoid the disconnection of services
- Etc…
Providing educational opportunities
Donations of school supplies
Even though the public school does not charge money from the students, families have to provide uniforms, shoes, school bags and stationary items for their children to study. This cost can be difficult to cover for some underprivileged families. We sometimes step in to make sure students can be provided with the equipment they need for their education. Some former travellers might also be keen on supporting the children they met while they were in Batticaloa.
Improving the village preschool garden
We are currently supporting a preschool in our village, as the teacher has asked us if we could help to develop an outdoor space for the students to play and learn gardening.
The process to turn this 500 sq. ft space into a sandy play area with wooden boxes to grow plants has now been completed.
Parents have cleaned the land, removed weeds and stones to prepare the space and collected the good soil, before a truckload of sand was brought.
Parents, teachers and kids have also helped to sieve the good soil, and mix it with compost and green waste in the wooden raised beds made on the side of the land by local carpenters.
The old cement posts have been used horizontally to raise the level of the fence foundations, to avoid flooding of the land during heavy rains.
Wooden frames have been fixed to the walls to allow the easy hanging of plants pots in future.
The motivation of some of the kids to carry the sand in small buckets has been fantastic!
The garden looks much cleaner now, kids can play safely outside, and we hope they will enjoy planting in the raised beds.
Language classes
In the past, we used to organize English classes for children. Spoken English classes are specially difficult to find in villages, so here we go again… planning to restart welcoming kids and youth, hopefully in 2025!
Caring for the environment
We have always been keen on participating in / organizing environmental cleaning days.
The beach, steps away from our office, is the theater of regular beach cleaning events, organized by various civil society groups and local authorities.
We introduced the usage of several types of bags to facilitate the segregation of the different types of collected waste and their recycling.
Many seeds have started sprouting in bottles collected on the beach!
This is part of a comprehensive dream-project named Rumi’s Eco Garden, explained here.
Creating bridges for mutual understanding
Our company name, East N’ West on Board, was given to reflect a core aspect of our work. If you have read a bit about Sri Lanka before, you have probably heard about the tragic decades-long civil war that ravaged the country, especially the North and East, where most of the fighting happened, from the 1980ies to 2009. Due to the prevailing insecurity, tension and propaganda during the war, mistrust and clashes have also happened between the different communities, particularly in Batticaloa, where Tamil speaking Hindus, Muslims and Christians have lived next to each other.
It has therefore been important, through our work, to bring our humble contribution to the needed reconciliation and peace building between the communities.
For us, East N’ West on Board means first, enabling some meaningful cross-cultural interactions between the different communities of Sri Lanka. We are therefore happy that our team is multi-faith, multicultural and from the East and the West of Sri Lanka. Working together, enjoying together, celebrating each other’s festivals together… are occasions to get to know each other and let go prejudices that have kept the different communities apart.
Our name also reflects our commitment to create a better mutual understanding between our Western guests and our Eastern hosts, who share a common humanity but might have different cultures and priorities, values in life. Meaningful discussions usually happen during our excursions or when guests have dinner in a homestay.
In a world where islamophobia has become alarming, we also aim to re-connect Muslims and people of other faiths. When our guests observe the prayer and interact with the believers at a local mosque, they are usually very interested to meet the imam, ask him many questions about Islam, and might end up questioning the relevance of the existing islamophobia in their home countries.
Saving resources while conserving nature
Water…
Let’s speak about water first… This is classical, but we have a water saving flushing system in our toilets, and reuse the waste water our RO water filter produces for washing and gardening.
Unless you install huge storage tanks, collecting rainwater in our area is challenging as most of the rain happens from November to February, while other months barely witness any precipitation.
In the garden, we mulch our plants to feed the soil and avoid evaporation of the water, and use olla irrigation system (watering plants with buried unglazed clay pots, called ollas, to release water slowly and continuously into the soil). We will also test the Chapin bucket irrigation system soon.
Electricity…
For saving electricity, we have designed the reception area of our office as a high-roof, well ventilated space, with many windows allowing cross ventilation.
As we also have trees around providing a beneficial shade, most of the year, we do not need to use fans, the open windows and the cross ventilation will be enough.
We also have installed LED bulbs everywhere, and sensors for auto switch-off of outside bulbs daytime.
Still following the progress of solar panels and their growing affordability…
Gas…
Like many families around us, we will use the firewood we collect from our garden when cooking for a group, saving gas in the process.
Paper…
While most of our work is already digitalized (itineraries, promotion material, etc.), whenever printing is necessary, we use as much as possible scrap paper. The accounts being the most paper-greedy process in our office, we are in the process of digitalizing them, to save paper, ink and valuable time!
Single use plastic…
We avoid as much as possible single use plastic, in our office and in our tours. No straws, plastic cutlery, single use glasses will be used…
From the beginning of our company, we have purchased stainless steel tableware and cloth napkins to avoid pollution in our excursions and homestays.
Even though we could still improve this, we try to always go shopping with our baskets, containers and tote bags to avoid polythene bags.
Plastic water bottles…
From the creation of our travel agency, we have always avoided single use plastic bottles.
When on an all-island tour, our guests will have access to a refillable 19 liter water bottle in their vehicle and metallic water bottles.
For our excursions and homestays in Batticaloa, we are equipped with water filters that turn well water into safe drinking water, which is offered to our guests in reusable aluminium bottles throughout their stay with us.
We are even a water refill station, registered here on the www.refilltheworld.com website and refill for free the empty bottles of thirsty travellers. Be welcome here…
Construction material and furniture…
The finalization of our new office’s construction, originally a half-built house, has been made using a maximum of second hand material.
This means all roof tiles, doors and windows are recycled, as well as most of its furniture have been bought from local recyclers.
Buying local, second hand, avoids using new resources, while providing work to collectors, recyclers, carpenters, painters, etc. to upcycle used items.
Old is gold!
Waste management…
We implement the 5 R’s concept (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle) throughout our activities as a travel agency and try to also raise the awareness of our partners about it.
Our waste are sorted out, with recyclable items kept for further use or handed over segregated to the Batticaloa Municipal Council waste management team.
Except cardboard and paper which we do not like to compost because of their potential ink or chemicals, we never handover any green waste to the waste management team, as we know composting green waste creates free green gold for the garden…
Rather than throwing away green waste, we used to collect some all around like cow dung on the nearby beach or branches thrown by our neighbours.
Green waste loads given at our request by the municipality have been the main resource to create our beloved Rûmi’s Eco Garden, a dream come true, combining beach cleaning, recycling and permaculture activities.
