North Philadelphia's so-called "Badlands" are about to get a little better. Thanks to a $700,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kensington's Empowerment Group will soon launch a three-year economic-development and marketing campaign to draw consumers and help businesses get established in and around the North Fifth Street Latino Corridor [Cover, "Home Away From Home," Michael T. Regan, Sept. 23, 2004]. The group hopes its efforts will create more than 100 new jobs.

The campaign will portray the corridor as a destination for finding shops, restaurants and cultural attractions, and is expected to bring $2 million worth of revenue through increased spending and commerce.

"A lot of people don't know about the area and all the good it has," says Laura Gumpert, Empowerment Group spokeswoman. "It's a matter of marketing it in a positive way and highlighting all the culturally diverse aspects and bright futures it offers."

The group will also work with members of its Philadelphia Entrepreneurship Program - which offers business classes and workshops teaching marketing, management and finance, and other business essentials -- to create 65 new businesses that will offer an additional 40 jobs to low-income workers.

It also plans to hire three bilingual business consultants to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with one-on-one mentoring, an essential resource for starting a small business.

"Our goal is to help people create jobs for themselves," says Gumpert. "We will work with people to start any kind of business they want. The more popular areas are general contracting, cleaning companies and food services, but it can really run the gamut."

The grant tripled the organization's annual budget, according to Empowerment Group Executive Director Sylvie Gallier.

Many in the surrounding neighborhoods hope that money will trickle down to other blocks, thus improving more than just the business corridor.

Peaches Ramos, a community advocate and block captain at Ninth and Indiana streets, hopes the Empowerment Group's campaign will help beautify her neighborhood. Ramos, who has worked for 29 years to clean up her community -- "I chased the drug dealers away and got more people involved. I cleaned a lot of corners," she says -- is now aiming to have abandoned and neglected properties fixed up, and vacant lots beautified.

She says neighbors have already planted gardens to help spruce up the streets.