#PinoyPride: Filipino tour guide helps make UN virtual tours a reality
MANILA, Philippines — Vienna does not wait for a pandemic to end.
Tours at the United Nations Headquarters in Vienna, Austria have shifted online for the time being as the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) threat remains, with the country recording 16,179 cases including 629 deaths, based on the latest World Health Organization situation report.
Helping the international organization fulfill its mission is Filipino tour guide Henri Abued Manzano, who is among 20 guides on deck to lead virtual tours of the Vienna International Centre — one of the four global UN headquarters.
“We quickly decided that if visitors can’t come to us, we will have to come to them,” said Johanna Kleinert, chief of the UN Information Service Vienna’s Visitors Service.
Although the Vienna International Centre is gradually reopening due to relaxing of COVID-19 protocols in Austria, guided tours remain suspended.
Just days after the local tour suspension back in March, Henri and his fellow tour guides from UN Vienna managed to set up makeshift home studios in their living rooms to continue tours through video.
“More than 50,000 people usually visit the UN in Vienna every year, and they want to hear how the organizations based there are working for the Sustainable Development Goals,” read a post on the UN website.
Under work from home, Henri’s first project was to produce a #GlobalGoals YouTube video tour that explains how the United Nations is realizing Sustainable Development Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities.
We couldn’t be more proud of the result as seen below.
