MALAYSIANSKINI | In 2015, Shyam Priah Marimuthu set out to do something new to help Kuala Lumpur's homeless – or street people, as she prefers to call them.

Shyam had been helping them through her NGO Yellow House KL since 2012, giving them haircuts, doing their laundry, and preparing them for job interviews.

But while giving a tour of Kuala Lumpur to friends of a friend, something struck her.

"I was taking them around, the usual touristy stuff, and I shared with one of them that in my heart I would love to teach the homeless people to do this (become tour guides), because they know the streets better than anyone.

"We say that their weakness is that they're on the streets, but if we turn that into their strength, it automatically becomes an opportunity for them.

"So when I came back home I thought, 'Why am I still talking about this when I can actually do something?'" she told Malaysiakini recently.

So Shyam set out to accomplish this goal to help the street people she had come to know over the years.

She failed, twice. But she refused to give up, especially when the opportunity arose for her to try and achieve her goal a third time.

According to Shyam (photo), a friend had posted a link to a Finance Ministry programme dubbed Volunteering for International Professional (VIP), which sought to create linkages between local and foreign social entrepreneurs.

But having worked with Malaysiakini's marketing department for close to four years until 2010, she was initially hesitant to work with the then-BN government.

"So alamak, what to do, what to do. But the offer was so juicy it was so irresistible," she said.

She finally relented and signed up for the programme. She and another local volunteer were partnered with three foreign experts from the Philippines, Argentina, and Italy.

Armed with RM10,000 seed funding from the government, the five of them toiled for the next four months to train street people.

Then in January this year, they launched Unseen Tours KL, and business has been booming. To date, they've had over 200 bookings, and there are plans for them to expand to other states in Malaysia such as Penang, and a tie-up with a major tourism player is in the pipeline.

Here's the story of Shyam and Unseen Tours in her own words.

UNSEEN TOURS is not a Malaysian thing, there are Unseen Tours in London, Barcelona, and others. I actually went and volunteered n took tours in Hamburg, Prague and in Berlin as well.

And everywhere I went, anyone that was willing to speak to me, I would sit down, and all the guides that I spoke to they said it has transformed their lives. I wanted to bring that to Malaysia, and try to get this going.

OUR STREET PEOPLE ARE VERY TALENTED, it is just that they don't have a platform to market themselves and there's no avenue to help them with capacity building.

OUR OBJECTIVE at Yellow House and Unseen Tours is to remove people from the streets and give them a way to make a living. Something that is scalable and can be replicated.

THIS IS NOT POVERTY TOURISM and we are not bringing tourists to see the poor side of Malaysia. In fact, its the exact opposite, where people will have to sign a form where they will not speak about homelessness with the guide, immaterial of whether they're urban poor or homeless.

THIS IS ABOUT RESTORING THEIR DIGNITY and making our guides understand that they are still very much one of us, because homelessness can happen to anyone, and to show them that people care and opportunities like this are available.

THE FIRST TIME I FAILED with Unseen Tours was because we didn't have accommodation for our guides, we didn't have cash to pay them allowances or give them lunch money. And I was alone.

Some of them, if they were meeting us somewhere, would actually walk where we were because there were no free buses at the time.

THE SUCCESS of Unseen Tours was because a lot of government agencies came forward. The National Anti-drugs Agency has been fantastic, as has the Federal Territories Ministry and Kuala Lumpur City Hall.

We say we need to use a transit centre for accommodation, and they say 'Yeah, go ahead'. Can we be part of this event, and have space for training? 'Yeah, go ahead.'

So having a project under the Finance Ministry has actually opened doors, but also built relationships with all the agencies, and they know we are doing something good.

A LOT OF NGOS ARE DOING GOOD WORK, but there are those that think feeding street people is just enough. They think it is the solution, so much so that my street friends say that they can't eat because they're being fed six to seven times a day.

We feed them because it makes us feel good, but when they're lining up, some may think that 'I'm only worth this plate of rice'. So how are we going to give back their dignity?

SOME NGOS WON'T EAT THE FOOD THEY GIVE. Some of the food is cooked in the morning, served for lunch, and by the time you salvage it for donations, it's already 3pm. So when it gets to the street people it's already spoiled.

There is so much food that street people can't eat it all. The food is left behind by the NGOs and the blame goes back to the street people because 'the NGOs are doing good'. But how can you blame them if the NGOs don't clean up after themselves?

SOMETIMES THEY JUST WANT TO SIT AND TALK TO YOU, so just go introduce yourself, and ask where they're from. Talk about something that is not about homelessness that doesn't remind them that are on the streets.

I WANT TO HELP THE HOMELESS because as a person, we all need to know what our strengths are and what are our capabilities and limitations. I realised I was good at talking to people. My father used to say I could sell ice to Eskimos.

My parents were strong characters. My mother was a teacher and my father was in the air force. So I came from a family of disciplined high achievers. And I realised that I can help people in a more structured way.

MANY MALAYSIANS ARE STUCK BEHIND A DESK, so please do come out and something during the weekends for others.

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