Varanasi (UP), July 24 Taking a cue from the Smart City missions by governments to improve a city with technology systems, the ongoing International Temples Convention and Expo (ITCX) 2023, has launched Smart Temples Connect by Temple Connect.
“The mission aims to empower temple ecosystems with new-age technology, implementations for green temples and plastic-free temple ecosystems. The mission will also conduct audits for creating better SOPs (standard operating procedures),” said Giresh Kulkarni founder of ITCX 2023 and Temple Connect.
The ongoing International Temples Convention and Expo (ITCX) 2023, a mega knowledge-sharing meet that has converged temple stakeholders from 250 temples around the world, has served as a launchpad for a line of innovative products, services and initiatives.
The event highlights best practices and learnings for temple ecosystems.
Being held at Varanasi’s Rudraksh Convention Centre, it has about 1,000 delegates participating in the knowledge-sharing and networking platform that featured talks, sessions and case studies on organisation, management and administration of temple ecosystems.
“While well-established temples possess a robust financial bandwidth to execute it, the mid and smaller temples lack guidance, leading to stagnant growth. The Smart Temple Mission seeks to support them in this ecosystem. It plans to conduct audits and initiatives to empower even the temple-dependent ecosystem - from phoolwalas, restaurants to transport or the tourism-dependent guide in those cities and support its growth to a new level,” Kulkarni said.
Along with the Smart Temples Mission, he also launched Social influencer’s connect.
“Social influencer’s connect initiative brings all social media influencers in the space of devotion, spiritual and CSR to support smaller temples and different causes by temples,” he explained.
ITCX 2023 also witnessed the launch of the trailer of Shivlings of Kashi - a book inspired by Kashi Khand and Ling Puran by PS Venkataramanan and his wife Lalitha V.
The book is essentially a compilation of Kashi’s Shivlings, various notable temples and the different elements related to it, providing a peek into Indian spirituality.
Its trailer was in a documentary format, and eventually, a web series or a YouTube-based series about the Shivlings of Kashi will follow. Through Annadan.com, Temple Connect has connected about 1000 odd temple food distribution centres across India.
On birthdays or other important occasions, devotees can visit the website, select the temple or the institution/place - assisted living facilities, schools, or orphanages, and the number of food plates to donate before clicking on ‘submit’ and making payments.
This initiative aims to bridge the gap between donors-- be it individuals or corporates from a CSR POV - and the end beneficiary by ensuring that the food has been well-distributed.
“The insight for this initiative came from the fact that while the ratio of annakshtras or temples to gurdwaras in a city is 1:100, there isn’t anyone taking care of food distribution as opposed to the consistent execution of langar in gurudwaras across the world,” said Kulkarni.
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