While many of their teammates head off to party on end-of-season trips, a group of AFL players will be staying with the indigenous Vadda forest people of Sri Lanka.

AFL stars including indigenous players Adam Goodes and Richard Tambling, along with Brett Kirk and Brad Sewell, were to fly to Sri Lanka on Monday to work with people there and learn about reconciliation issues.

The aim of the trip is to build bridges between communities - especially indigenous ones - through sports such as cricket and football.

Goodes said he grew up not knowing anything about his own Aboriginal culture but had now embraced it and was interested in other indigenous cultures.

"That's something I'm really looking forward to, visiting the Vadda people up in the hills," he told reporters.

"They still live a traditional life up in the hills.

"When other people came to their country they moved, retreated to the hills, so they could keep their own culture and their own beliefs and really haven't assimilated into the other communities.

"Anything that we can bring back and brainstorm when we come back into the country would be a fantastic thing, we could implement a few things into our own indigenous communities."

The players will spend 10 days touring Sri Lanka, which is recovering from a 27-year-old civil war that ended last year and the 2004 tsunami, when more than 35,000 people were killed on the island.

The program is being organised by the Global Reconciliation and the Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT University, with plans to involve Victorian Aboriginal communities.

Institute director Paul James said the core idea was that "everyday practices can be used to foster reconciliation".

"The aim is not empty harmony or saying `sorry', but doing practical things with a research base," Professor James said.

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