Countryside Capitalization and Community Empowerment through Tourism

Abstract

Even though, there were many programmes for poverty alleviation in Sri Lanka, rural areas are still undergoing various socio-economic and environmental challenges along with deprivation and marginalization in development process. However, most of these rural areas that suffers from poverty are abundant with natural and socio-cultural resources. Therefore, it is inevitable to investigate the role of prolonged poverty alleviation programmes and social welfare policies on countryside capitalization and community empowerment. Inductive empirical investigations through explorative research design of case studies of selected three villages; Ihalagalagama, Mudaliwatta, and Rideegama enables the study to unveil multiple truths from the socially constructed world. Focus group discussion, in-depth interview of key informants through snowball sampling, direct observations and artefacts in three villages were used in arriving at the conclusions. The findings of the study indicate that, these villages are full of priceless diverse socio- cultural and environmental capital, which were not at all taped by the poverty alleviation programmes. Sustainable capitalization of human and natural geographical resources through poverty alleviation will be inevitable for community empowerment, which is the primary intention of poverty alleviation programmes. This intensifies redefining and redesigning of poverty alleviation and socio-economic welfare policies to stimulate the countryside capitalization and community empowerment.