Pubdate: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 Source: Phoenix (PA Edu) Copyright: 2003 The Phoenix Contact: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/phoenix/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/869 Author: Elizabeth Wright Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) 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. - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl