Centre for Heritage and Tourism Development
DHAN Foundation’s Tourism for Development theme is an outcome of the four-year pilot project ‘Endogenous Tourism for Rural Livelihoods’ implemented by it in Karaikudi and Kazhugumalai in Tamil Nadu with the support of United Nations Development Programme and Government of India. One of the key learnings of the project was that the diversifiedlivelihood opportunities exist in the tourism sector can contribute in poverty reduction. ‘Tourism for Development’ is a crosscutting theme to facilitate DHAN’s programmes working in the locations of tourism importance to capitalize the emerging opportunities in the tourism sector. It would be a multi–stakeholder and inclusive approach with all the stakeholders in tourism including the poor communities.
The key programme strategies are
- Organising the poor families into tourism based Peoples’ Organisations and introducing savings, credit and insurance services.
- Conserving and promoting heritage and artisanal skills by organising the artisans and service providers into Primary producer and marketing groups and federating them into a Producer cum Marketing Company.
- Strengthening existing skills and building new skills in production, servicing and marketing related to tourism.
- Linking the Peoples’ Organisations with commercial banks, markets and resource institutions for mobilizing resources, production and marketing of quality products.
- Facilitating research and development in the Peoples’ Organisations for product innovation, packaging and marketing.
- Ensuring responsible tourism through promoting tourism literacy and capacity building.
