St. Paul's Downtown Improvement District ambassador program a rewarding opportunity for job seekers

Tsvi Richard has been a cleaning and safety ambassador for three years and she loves it.

"Very rewarding, honestly," she says. "I mean, I just personally enjoy cleaning and then you're kind of out there, I really like just being able to connect to the community and be, you know, just help people. It feels personally good for me."

But does her job always equates to smiles?"

There's a lot of people who are just thanking us all the time and they're like, 'this is a thankless job,' and I'm just like, I feel like I get thanked a lot actually," Richard explains. "But there's more positive than any of those like actual negative things."

Of course there are challenges to every job too.

"Every situation is different and you know, I've have experiences, but I always feel like there's more I could do," Richards adds.

But that still doesn't take away her love for the job, which isn't always a pretty one, and includes picking up trash, cleaning graffiti tags, wellness checks and even helping Mayor Kaohly Her.

"I was downtown here and I was lost, and I didn't know where to go," Mayor Her explained. "And it was late at night and I was trying to pay for my parking. Two Downtown Alliance ambassadors came up to me and just wanted to make sure I was OK, and want to make sure I knew where I was going. And to help me use the machine because I was having trouble paying at this machine. And so it's really about like, how do we make sure that people know they're not alone?"

The downtown alliance also raved about the program's compliance rate which stands at 87%district wide, meaning an ambassador needed to call for police assistance only 13% of the time.

Her also knows that this group will be busy on Tuesday with the city's St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

"And we all know we really celebrate St. Patrick's Day not just on one day, but you know the entire month," she adds. "And so there's gonna be a lot of activities happening here, and we are showing people that our downtown, our city, we are open for business."

There are two different types of ambassadors, according to John Bandemer with the St. Paul Downtown Aliiance.

"We recorded almost a million different ways that our ambassadors made a difference in downtown," says Bandemer. "Hundreds of thousands of pieces of trash got picked up. 5,000 graffiti tags got cleaned up and removed. I think we had 3,000 wellness checks."

The program covers 90 blocks has helped make significant improvements to the city.

"There will be an enhanced security detail from the police department for St. Patrick's Day. There is every year and with all the activity that's happening downtown, on West 7th Street, you'll see increased presence of the police department," adds Downtown Alliance President Joe Spencer.