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Backyard Tour Helps Give Back to Kuching, Sarawak

Dawson Lee, Director of Backyard Tour, is sharing their story on how they became a responsible tour operator providing authentic experiences while giving back to local communities in Kuching, Sarawak. 

Dawson is a part of our Kuala Lumpur chapter  and we asked Dawson to provide us a little more information on how exactly they were able to build such a program.

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What inspired you to create this initiative? 

Our co-founder Abbie had a dream to help her fellow Bidayuh villagers; especially the young people, to find work income opportunities instead of just being jobless. She wanted to help the locals make use of the natural attractions readily available around the villages before outsiders come in and take it away from them, and also as a way to generate extra income through tourism.

We believe that the villagers have much more than just services to offer as they are very experienced with their village surroundings and they have a lot of local knowledge, waiting to be shared. We believed that we could bring something fresh to the tourism industry here by introducing new experience-based tours that focus on giving back. 

Is there a unique story of how it came to be?

Backyard Tour started out as ‘The Backyard Tour Guide,’ a non-profit social projectwith the support of the Malaysia Innovation Agency (AIM) through their ‘Berbudi Berganda’ competition.

Our initial aim was to introduce community-based tourism to rural village youths around Kuching, and give them training in packaging their tours and figuring the cost for their tours. We approached 8 different villages and linked up with 23 guides.

We then enrolled ourselves into the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Center (MaGiC) Social Enterprise Accelerator Program in August to set up a social enterprise.

How is your initiative financed? 

Our project last year was financed by a grant given by AIM and was mostly used to fund our operations in the rural areas. After graduating from the accelerator program, we received seed money to help us kick-start our business and combined with our income as a company through commission from selling the tours run by local villagers, as well as through providing transport services, we are able to keep running the company.

We have also received some donations from friends in which we used to buy a new camera to help us capture beautiful photos.

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What has been your biggest success or accomplishment? 

Our biggest success so far was succeeding in bringing 13 students engineering students and 3 facilitators from Engineers without Borders Australia to one of the villages we operate in to conduct their first Malaysia Humanitarian Design Summit project. The project was a huge success and we made new friends and gained valuable networking opportunities with the group.

What has been your biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge for us for us so far was actually setting up the company legally. The tourism industry is set up in a way that only people who have huge financial backing, as well as the right experience to set up a legal tour company. The problem was we had no previous tour-related experience. Even our guides cannot be licensed due to educational qualifications. 

Do you have any tips for aspiring do-gooders who want to give back or start their own social project?

Always be passionate about the cause that you are helping out with. Don’t start something just for the sake of killing time or receiving money, because it won’t last. Also, choose the right people to work with because having people who don’t share the same vision as you will derail your work. Lastly, don’t be afraid of starting small and pivot when you need to. There’s no point in overburdening your operation with unnecessary costs.

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Purposeful Traveler is a series that profiles inspiring people or projects making a purposeful change to the way we travel. You can connect with Dawson and Backyard Tours on Travel Massive and Facebook


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