'This is not poverty tourism': Helping KL's homeless find their strengths

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...