Caring through sharing with Yamu.lk’s ‘One Plate Project’

Wednesday, 26 June 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Yamu.lk, a comprehensive online city guide of Colombo that reviews places of interest, has taken on the task of celebrating ethnic diversity by introducing ‘The One Plate Project’. “Sri Lanka is currently on the cusp of racial tolerance. We want to reverse the belief that everyone agrees with extremism by leveraging on the most celebrated part of being a multi-ethnic society, our common love for each other’s food,” said Indrajit Samarajiva – Director, Yamu Ltd.

The idea behind ‘The One Plate Project’ stems from festive seasons and our sharing nature that it brings about. Regardless of which race is doing the brunt of the celebrating the whole country gets together to celebrate. Sharing a traditional plate of food with your neighbours is almost customary during festive time. The appreciation of the act is returned when the plates are returned back filled with goodies. The plate of food was available in a Sinhala, Tamil, Burger and Muslim menu and can be purchased with a small sum of Rs. 500 through the anything.lk website. The variety of food ranges depending on the plate you wish to share from kevili such as aasme, kokis to palahaaram such as jelebi, rabaa laddus to breudher to watalappam. Once a plate is purchased, it is then gifted to someone outside your community and you too receive a plate from a community outside of your own. Each plate carried a customised message from the sender to the receiver. The first round of the campaign was successfully completed and all plates ordered were delivered on 17 July 2013. Samarajiva added: “We want all Sri Lankans to join us and spread the word, that we are still one big family.” Yamu partnered with anything.lk as the e-commerce platform for the project whilst JWT Sri Lanka conceptualised the entire project.