Homeless’ s Tour

Quem melhor para conhecer os cantinhos mais secretos de uma cidade e as histórias por trás de vários lugares, senão quem vive nas ruas? Em Londres, um grupo de voluntários treina os sem-teto a trabalharem como guias turísticos, e assim os Unseen Tours já viraram um verdadeiro sucesso. Ótimo para conhecer um lado da cidade diferente dos cartões postais e também para ajudar os menos afortunados. by Linda Ligios

THE STREETS OF LONDON

If you want to discover London there’s a whole range of walking tours on offer. But surely few can be more original than ‘Unseen Tours’, which use homeless people as guides. The tours were set up in August 2010 by an organisation called Sock Mob Events, whose Lidija Mavra (below left) explains how they work: Lidija

Unseen Tours are different because they show you off-the-beaten-track parts of the city, but also through the eyes of someone that you might not expect. That’s the main difference, really. So you get the history and the culture, like you would on any tour, but the twist is that you’re seeing all these things through the eyes of a person who maybe has a very different reality to a lot of us. So it’s not a case of pointing out where homeless people live, but it’s seeing the city as it is, but through someone else’s eyes. And the guides, they have some very interesting stories about street life and also wider social issues . They’re very good at debating and challenging people’s thinking about wider social issues that affect all of us, not just homelessness. So it’s a really interesting mix on the tour: you get the history, culture, social issues, but also a lot of fun and entertainment ‘cause the guides are very good at making people laugh and building up rapport, so it’s a very personal tour as well. We then asked her about the individual "Unseen Tours":

They’re all very different: some of them are in more maybe tourist central areas, like Covent Garden or London Bridge. So, if you want to see like some of the famous landmarks of London, but also combine that with a bit of unusual history, then I would recommend Covent Garden or London Bridge. If you want something more Bohemian, a bit more on the edge, a bit more trendy, then I would recommend horeditch and Brick Lane. And those tours also have a deep history of multiculturalism, immigration, and really show you how the city has changed over the years. And then, if you want a tour that shows you some deep contrasts between rich and poor, and how hidden poverty can be in London, then (the) Mayfair tour.

I think a lot of people are quite surprised, initially, because I think a lot of people come wanting to help the homeless, but then they don’t understand they’re going to get a very good professional tour as well. I remember one lady said to me, when we first started, “Very honestly,” she said, “I came along to sympathise and to tolerate, but actually I was blown away by how good the tour is!" And that seems to characterise a lot of people’s reactions, so, yes, very positive

Fonte: http://www.speakup.com.br/index.

php/materias/251-308-homeless-tours.html Acesso em 12 de junho de 2013.