Linking and promoting traditional food based entrepreneurs

Saturday, 14 January 2023 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Harmony page, as part of our rural entrepreneurship promotion initiative series for this year, linking entrepreneurs from around Sri Lanka (as a component of developing a referral marketing campaign for rural industries) has in the last week connected several entrepreneurs with each other, often those living in different regions of the country.

The purpose of linking these entrepreneurs is for them to be able to promote each other especially in different districts of the country and where applicable be inspired by the rising trend of small and medium scale traditional industries in Sri Lanka.

This creative spark in rural business innovation is seen as a direct response to the current manmade economic crisis of this country.

Believing that fellow citizens of this country can raise up each other from this quagmire and acting as language intermediaries at times, the Harmony page team has so far in the past week linked upto about 20 entrepreneurs with each other. This includes one of Sri Lanka’s senior most food preservation experts, 78-year-old Sangarapillai Naguleswaran of Jaffna who we introduced to traditional food promoter, Chandani Gurusinghe. Chandani is the daughter of Sri Lanka’s foremost traditional rice cultivator and conservationist, P. Gurusinghe, Chairman of Movement for Traditional Seeds and Farmers and we hope to facilitate the introduction with him and Naguleswaran shortly.

Chandani Gurusinghe runs a traditional food outlet in Nugegoda under the brand name of Wasa Nehe Bolang. By next week a range of north-based food products made by small scale value added packeted/bottled food producers will be sent to several traditional food selling shops in Colombo including the outlet of Chandani Gurusinghe. Sangarapillai Naguleswaran who is a member of the Northern Chamber of Industries and is a trainer for the younger generation of food entrepreneurs in the north-east will be soon linking many younger generation Sri Lankan Tamil traditional health food industry enthusiasts with those such as Chandani. The facilitation of this will be done by the Harmony page.

In a soon to be disclosed venue we will be also arranging for a small number of food/herb/health entrepreneurs to meet each other to discuss a traditional food promotion trade fair series which could culminate in large scale awareness and knowledge centric food trade fairs that will be aimed at boosting the health/immunity and traditional entrepreneurship of the nation.

This is a continuation of the initiatives that the Weekend FT and the Harmony page have carried out throughout last year, radically creating a base for people-centric development journalism in the country at a time it is needed most. Keep an eye out for updates each Saturday.