MEDIA ALERT:
October 11, 2024
CONTACT:
Tri Nguyen
415-608-6237
tnguyen@glide.org
An Alternative to Encampment Sweeps:
The City’s Investment in Transforming Downtown
The Cecil Williams Community Ambassadors know what it’s like to need a second chance. That’s why we hired them to give people on the streets second chances. Hear their stories and shadow them on a typical workday.
WHAT: The Cecil Williams Community Ambassadors will share their stories of overcoming adversity and helping our street communities do the same at a half-hour celebration of the program’s successful launch. They will offer members of the press the opportunity to shadow them on their workday rounds.
Since July of this year, the ambassadors have been providing case management and service referrals to people in a ten-block radius around GLIDE, from Ellis to Sutter and Mason to Polk. In just a short time, they have already saved lives and helped people towards housing and recovery resources. They respond to calls for help from local neighbors and business owners, who want compassionate alternatives to police response when dealing with disruptions from people suffering in the streets. They also pick up trash, clean graffiti, and build community. This is a great chance to see the ambassadors in action.
WHY: Investing in direct services is key to making urban cores great places to live and work once more: which is why GLIDE’s ambassadors are a key part of Mayor London Breed’s urban revitalization plan. In recent months, KTVU and ABC 7 featured GLIDE’s CEO Dr. Gina Fromer critiquing the movement towards harsher and more frequent encampment sweeps. GLIDE’s experiences and expertise confirms the established research: working with homeless people to solve their problems is more effective than sweeping their tents. When police take down a tent, it stays down for a week; when ambassadors connect someone to a program, they have the potential to get off the streets permanently.
WHEN: Thursday October 17th
- 10:30am Story sharing from ambassadors, ribbon-cutting on our new community parklet
- 11:00am-12:00pm: shadowing ambassadors on their everyday rounds
If you can’t make this day and time, please contact us to arrange a different time to shadow ambassadors.
WHERE: GLIDE – 330 Ellis Street – Lobby
BACKGROUND: Our community ambassadors program was launched to honor the life and legacy of Reverend Cecil Williams. Our co-founder relentlessly emphasized the importance of being “in the streets” working “for the people,” which is why this program is in his memory. The program focuses on creating safer and cleaner streets, neighborhood placemaking, connecting people to services and support groups, and community-building with residents, businesses, and service providers. Ambassadors are encouraged to keep GLIDE’s core value of unconditional love front-and-center as they do their work. As well as removing trash and graffiti, they provide help across ten life domains: food, shelter, life skills, family, community, substance use, mental health, medical health, education, and income. The conversations Community Ambassadors have with Tenderloin’s unhoused and vulnerable people will inspire GLIDE’s ongoing program work.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
ABOUT GLIDE: GLIDE is a nationally recognized center for social justice, dedicated to fighting systemic injustices, creating pathways out of poverty and crisis, and transforming lives. Through our integrated comprehensive services, advocacy initiatives, and inclusive community, we empower individuals, families, and children to achieve stability and thrive. GLIDE is on the forefront of addressing some of society’s most pressing issues, including poverty, housing, homelessness, and racial and social justice. GLIDE’s mission is to create a radically inclusive, just, and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization. Our Core Values emerge from GLIDE as a spiritual movement. They are rooted in empowerment.