The innovative, austrian Social-Start-Up “Shades Tours” organizes guided tours in Vienna. The specialty about it: all of the tours are guided by a (former) homeless person and show the participants Vienna off the beaten track aside of golden facades and opulent Sacher cakes. Shades Tours tries to create awareness for the shady sides of Vienna and living on the streets as a homeless person.
Shades Tours – Take a look behind the golden scenes of Vienna.
Kategorie:
General,
Veranstaltungen in Wien,
What?How?Where?When?
Whether you are a single person, a travel group, a corporation, school or association – Shades Tours offers different tours year-round, where you visit different social facilities or even cook as a group for homeless people in one of those facilities. What all offered tours have in common: they are guided by a (former) homeless person, who gets the chance to reintegrate himself in a working place with this job and at the same time illuminates the participants about living as a homeless person in Vienna. Fighting against bias and stereotypes, to sensitize the people and to broach the issue of homelessness – that’s what Shades Tours want to achieve with their work.
How everything started.
The founder Perrine Schober incorporated Shades Tours in fall 2015, after she engaged intensively with the issue “Tourism as an economic instrument to fight poverty” in her studies in tourism management. The elaborated concept got instantly nominated for the Social Business Award ” ideas against poverty” and is completely self-financed.
The concept.
The aim or rather the idea behind Shades Tours is to use tourism, to give homeless people the chance to re-integrate themselves in the job market. Shades Tours acts here as an “interface” between being homeless and a permanent position in a business. After the guides worked successfully for a certain time at Shades Tours, demonstrated reliability and showed the will to work, the time at Shades Tours will help them as a significant reference for future applications. At the same time Shades Tours wants to create awareness for homelessness in Vienna, help the participants get rid of their bias and remove fear of contact.
We are partners.
We, from Boutiquehotel Stadthalle are proud partner of Shades Tours and love the concept as well as the people behind! So when you are in Vienna the next time, try a guided tour from a completely different point of view and help yourself to understand the important issue of being homeless in a golden city like Vienna. You can get more information about the concept of Shades Tours and the different possibilities of a tour here.