ORLANDO, Fla. — Keep your eyes peeled for people wearing blue polos in Downtown Orlando.

​It’s their first official week as part of the enhanced Downtown Ambassador Program.

While the original program that’s been going on for years has been aimed at helping visitors and locals, this is aimed at helping the homeless.

Some community leaders in Orlando are noticing that homelessness is becoming more of a problem. Among them is Freddy Clayton, who helps hundreds of homeless people every day as President of the Orlando Union Rescue Mission.

“I think everybody would agree that we have seen a significant increase or a surge in the number of homeless people in downtown Orlando for the past 6 months to a year,” said Clayton. 

Clayton shared they are feeling that surge at the Rescue Mission’s shelter.

“In my seven years here, we typically will have between five and 15 families on a waiting list. Right now we have over a 100,” said Clayton. 

It’s an issue these newly trained ambassadors are aiming to tackle.

As an expansion of the program that’s been going on since 2018, the new team is all specially trained on how to help the homeless by sharing what resources are available to them.

These ambassadors in blue polos will be on the streets seven days a week and can provide information on local shelters, services, facility reunification and more.

“They all have been trained on what it means to experience homelessness and the impact that, that has on an individual as well as a family,” said Kelly Allen, Marketing and Communications Manager of City of Orlando’s Downtown Development Board and Community Redevelopment Agency

They’ll make sure that those on the street have easy access to important contact numbers, like that of the Orlando Union Rescue Mission, as well as other important information.

“The ambassadors also have something called a street information guide and in this guide it has information about services like shelters, food, showers, where to get identification cards and then they can take this information, it also has where the lynx bus stop is as well,” said Allen.

While Clayton is supportive of the program, he doesn’t think this will deliver the results that are hoped for.

“From my experience, the overwhelming majority of those folks already know about the services and for whatever reason don’t take advantage of them,” said Clayton. 

With this ongoing issue, he thinks it is a step in the right direction.

“I appreciate any effort we can make to try and alleviate homelessness,” said Clayton. 

There are 22 ambassadors in this program. They can be summoned by phone or text message by anyone in the community, including businesses. The number for them is 407-225-4632.