ALUMS HOPE TRUCKING JOBS WILL EASE POVERTY IN KENSINGTON

The first client in the door at Kensington Driving Partners was trucker
material.

Just six months before, he'd gotten a driver's license. He spoke English
fluently, though, like many Kensington residents, he was born in Puerto
Rico. He was young -- 21 -- but he looked older. He had no work experience
to speak of, but he was eager to land a steady job. He had a high school
diploma. His criminal record was clean.

He had read a Spanish-language newspaper article about a pair of recent
Swarthmore graduates who work to start North Philadelphia residents on
careers as commercial drivers. So, like six other Kensington residents so
far, he decided to meet with Josh Hurwitz '02 and Phil Garboden '02 to see
what they had to offer.

When he walked in the door of the small office at 2111 N. Front Street
early in December, it became apparent to Hurwitz and Garboden that their
client fit the trucker profile perfectly.

They were excited because they believe they are offering an opportunity, if
only to a motivated few. They are convinced that earning a Class B
commercial license -- good for driving a school bus or delivery truck -- is
the best chance some people in this struggling neighborhood have for
securing themselves a career, rather than working low-wage jobs or facing
unemployment.

When their client came back for his next interview, Hurwitz and Garboden
described how they could coach him through trucking school or help find him
a driving job with free training. As a bus driver for the Philadelphia
school district, he can make almost triple the minimum wage of $5.15.
Bilingual candidates like him get an extra boost in hiring. Two months
later, their client is still waiting to hear back from the district,
Hurwitz said.

Another client would like help becoming a commercial trucker. If he earns a
Class A license, he can work as a big rig trucker and expect to make
$37,000 a year. That's about two and a half times what the typical
Kensington family earns.

Despite the opportunities, Kensington Driving Partners can only hope to
serve a small minority here -- those with clean records and a desire to try
their hand at a difficult profession. Felony drug convictions ruled our the
four other clients who have expressed interest in the program.

Garboden and Hurwitz, who are spending a $15,000 Lang grant on their
endeavor. Neither has ever done any commercial driving. Hurwitz said the
point isn't to teach people to drive trucks but to help them navigate the
system.

A chance meeting with a trucker on a Greyhound bus two summers ago inspired
Garboden to start Kensington Driving Partners. As he was sitting in his bus
seat, musing about his future after graduating from college, another
passenger on the bus started explaining how he was going down to
Tallahassee, Fla., to become a trucker. "He gave me the whole pitch,"
Garboden said.

Peter Murray '00, who worked with Hurwitz and Garboden in the past on a
similar venture, has high hopes for the program, praising Hurwitz and
Garboden for catching on to "a basic opportunity" for people in the
neighborhood. "It's very different than working at a gas station or in
retail. For folks working in the basic services, it's very difficult to
make a leap to a good wage," he said, and it's a way to punch through a
"glass ceiling or skill ceiling." A job that is full time, that provides a
livable wage and basic benefits, is an "enormous leap forward for many of
the residents in this area."

While U.S. census data pegs the average household income at $15,300, some
of the mean income statistics for Kensington drop below $10,000, Murray
said, depending on how the area's borders are defined.

"It's visually the poorest area in Philadelphia," Garboden said. "It became
the low-income ghetto situation that you have in many cities nowadays --
ghetto not being the scientific term exactly, but that's a pretty good way
to describe it."

A high rate of drug convictions as well as the widespread practice of
driving but never getting a license (police don't bother to stop drivers
for that too often, many said) bar a number of people in this community
from jobs as commercial drivers.

Drugs ruled out Kensington Driving Partners' second client, who in all
other ways had a similar background to its first. He even had a friend who
drove trucks so he knew what he was getting into. But he had been convicted
for dealing drugs, and they had to show him to the door.

A fifth of Kensington's adult population is unemployed, according to
Michael Felberbaum, the executive director of the Empowerment Group, the
umbrella organization for Kensington Driving Partners. Census data show
that over 48 percent of Kensington residents live in households that are
below the poverty line. Even with a job, a general lack of training and
English skills often means there is no second step on the job ladder.

Garboden and Hurwitz do not pretend to be trying to solve all of
Kensington's problems. It's a niche organization, they say, one that hopes
to help a mere handful of people find themselves a career. "If we have 20
people placed in commercial driving organizations after being around for
one year, we're ecstatic, " Garboden said.

While Kensington Driving Partners touts itself as a group that makes
opportunity somewhat easier to reach, Maria Borges has her doubts that such
a narrow effort will make much of a difference.

Borges works at the Norris Square Family Center where she finds employment
for 70 local job-hunters every year. The center has a small office on
Orkney Street at the William McKinley Elementary School, where the school
building is decorated with bright murals, a stark contrast to the two
gutted row houses right across the street.

Inside, Borges let a child play games on her computer while she described
her neighborhood, Kensington, where she has lived for 20 years. "This is
not a bad area. We've just had some bad luck," she said. "We've been
through drugs. A lot of theft." But despite the continuing problems, she
has seen some things get better over time.

She has seen how the area's decline spurred service groups to move into the
neighborhood and she watched grassroots efforts spring up within the
community. The neighborhood now has a range of well-developed community
organizations. The Free Library of Philadelphia lists 19 service groups in
Kensington, and there are many more.

The efforts of these groups renovated Norris Square -- once known as Needle
Park -- and the well-kept park is now lined by offices for these organizations.

But while the number of groups intent on helping Kensington has mushroomed
over the past 25 years, all seem to be powerless to solve the problems that
have been plaguing North Philadelphia for several decades.

For all the changes, when it comes to how easy it is for people in the
neighborhood to get jobs, "I haven't seen anything different," Borges said.

Out on North Front Street, in the shadow of the subway tracks that run to
Center City, store managers describe the people who have come to them
looking for work. Some say the situation is getting worse.

Richard Weber, a salesman at Gelfand's Hardware across the street from the
Empowerment Group's office, judges the need for jobs in the area by how he
often he fields requests for work, usually for construction work. Usually,
he can't help them. "Most of them are unskilled," he said. He also noted
that for many job seekers, language is another barrier to getting ahead.
More so than in other areas of North Philadelphia, Kensington has a high
concentration of Latinos -- 68 percent -- and many of them are immigrants.

The store manager, Hector Vicenty, said there is a lot of talent in the
neighborhood, just not enough education to get a job. "People are looking
for any labor -- anything they can do."

People are constantly coming in and asking for work, said Freddy Ghobriel,
the manager of Fine Fare Supermarket a few blocks up on the corner of
Susquehanna and Front Street. About half of the job-seekers come out of
halfway houses or work placement programs. He tries to help when he can, he
said, and has employees who have been on welfare. But as it is now, he
doesn't have any jobs to fill.

Borges said the majority of people she deals with at the Norris Square
Family Center do not have a high school diploma. If they do, she said, it's
from a Puerto Rican high school.

"The only jobs I've been able to link people on are factory jobs," Borges
said. She has been able to place a number of people at a factory outside
the neighborhood where workers are paid $5.75 an hour to sew zippers on
jackets.

What would make a difference? "Training. But realistic training." She said
she was both skeptical and optimistic that a group like Kensington Driving
Partners would provide that. "The class B thing sounds good, but most of
these people don't have licenses," she said.

Perhaps some of Borges' skepticism comes from experience. She knows how
much work is needed to make such very small steps against such very large
problems. She is also dubious of efforts by people who aren't from the
community.

Garboden and Hurwitz, dressed in their dark blue "KDP" polos and sitting in
their shared office at the Empowerment Group, said they will do their best
to see that their clients succeed. They just hope for more clients like
their first one.