What is a Street Ambassador?

From Getting Allston on Board to Warren St + Malcolm X Blvd, volunteer and paid Street Ambassadors play a pivotal role in many of LivableStreets’ campaigns. Trained by our staff and lead advocates, Street Ambassadors actively engage with people on the street, hearing and elevating the stories and experiences of community members to put community needs at the center and leading the conversation about changes on our streets.

We developed our paid Street Ambassador program because people are our biggest assets! Many of the neighborhoods where we work have historically and continue to be lived in by BIPOC and/or low income families and individuals. Due to decades of racism and classism, these neighborhoods have been chronically underinvested in terms of both physical and social infrastructure. Paying people for their expertise ensures our advocacy is rooted in community needs and will further racial and economic justice.

Why Street Ambassadors?

The best way to improve a street is to get out there and get people talking about it. Street Ambassadors play a crucial role in demystifying the public process, organizing community concerns, and directly communicating those concerns to officials and decision makers. . Street Ambassadors help to bring in voices that aren’t normally heard to ensure that our streets are safe, accessible, and equitable.

Thanks to the support of our Street Ambassadors, both paid and volunteer, we have accomplished a lot.

• We collected more than 1500 responses for our Longwood Area Multimodal Survey in 2017. The hard work of our Street Ambassadors helped lay the groundwork for our report "Finding A Cure: Transportation in the Longwood Area."
• As part of our American Legion Highway + Cummins Highway campaign in the summer of 2020, paid Street Ambassadors held both socially distanced and virtual conversations to collect over 500 survey responses from local residents. These responses led to the inclusion of these corridors as part of the City of Boston’s Healthy Streets COVID response. Residents shared that they want reduced speeding, so the City added protected bike lanes to narrow the street and make crossing the street safer. At the end of their employment, Street Ambassadors shared their findings directly with Boston City Councilors and Transportation Department staff.

Street Ambassador duties can include:

• Helping to design and administer surveys and collect petition signatures
• Communicating goals and benefits of proposed projects
• Handing out informational flyers
• Asking community members for their feedback

Upcoming Opportunities

Current Street Ambassador Work - Volunteer + Paid

We will be recruiting volunteers and paid Street Ambassadors for a number of campaigns - stay tuned for more opportunities soon!

• [Volunteer] The City of Somerville is redesigning Highland Ave as part of the Spring Hill Sewer Separation Project. We have been doing outreach to business owners on Highland Ave to talk with them about their curbside needs and how their customers travel to/from their business. Now we need your help for the next phase of this work!
  
  We're seeking volunteer Street Ambassadors throughout September to support us in sharing the results from our initial conversations and surveys with business owners. Please email Kristiana ([email protected]) to volunteer.