One Page Summary

SHADES TOURS found a way to include marginalized groups back into society and back into the labour market. We started working with the group of homeless people. SHADES TOURS creates jobs for homeless people who provide alternative walking city tours to children, students, companies and interested tourists on the topic of homelessness in Vienna.
When you think of homelessness you would think that the rational and logical equation
HOME + JOB = NOT HOMELESS. The reason why this simple equation does not work is because of the vicious circle of homelessness, that I have identified by working with homeless people by engaging them in a structure that supports their path out of homelessness. An addition challenge is that the longer the period of homelessness, the more difficult it is to get people out of it. We have found out that various dimensions of this vicious circle have to be addressed at the same time in order to help homeless people to get back on their feet. And this concept is the basis of SHADES TOURS.
We provide socio-political education on the topic of homelessness in Vienna. And if we talk about that, who would be the best person to talk about it? Indeed! Homeless people.

SHADES TOURS is therefore Vienna's unique business creating jobs for homeless people. Homeless people take tour participants on a tour explaining the different socio-politics of the city and its system. So far 9000 people joined our tours and activities. Today SHADES TOURS has six guides of which three made it out of homelessness after having been working six months with us. One of our guides is now also working 20h as SHADES TOURS sales and product manager for the back office and two more to join the back office team in 2018.
SHADES TOURS showed a proof of concept in the last two operational years and is therefore now developing a social franchise model to bring this self-financing concept to Manchester.