Jobs help on wheels to roll into Baltimore
Mobile employment center, sponsored by Pratt Library, BGE, to be deployed today
The first of the mobile jobs centers that Mayor Catherine Pugh says she wants to deploy across Baltimore is set to open today at Mondawmin Mall.
Paid for by Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and administered by the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the 38-foot recreational vehicle will travel to neighborhoods with the highest unemployment rates to help people create resumes, connect to training programs and apply for work.
“We need to get people working in our city,” Pugh said Monday. “We need to get out into the communities and go where the unemployment is at its highest.”
Pugh said she expects to raise enough money to launch “one or two” more mobile jobs centers before the end of the year. Her goal is to have seven fan out across the city to combat Baltimore’s 6.6 percent unemployment rate. Officially, 19,500 people are out of work, but officials say the number is significantly higher when discouraged workers who are no longer considered part of the workforce are included.
The roving employment center will begin touring targeted neighborhoods in May. It will travel across the city to Curtis Bay, Druid Heights, Oldtown and Westport, among other communities.
Inside, the vehicle looks like a classroom, with a dozen internet-connected computer stations. Library workers will guide visitors through available employment options, help them submit online applications and coach them on interview skills. The vehicle is equipped with large screens for group presentations.
Each neighborhood stop is expected to last four hours. The vehicle will travel through the city four days a week and two Saturdays a month.
The mobile jobs center is believed to be the first in the Baltimore region. There are similar programs in Southern Maryland, and cities including Atlanta and Memphis, Tenn.
Aris Melissaratos, interim dean at Stevenson University’s Brown School of Business and Leadership, called the center a “phenomenal idea.”
He said bringing opportunity directly to unemployed men and women will help break through apathy and despair.
“This will give the discouraged worker a ray of hope,” said Melissaratos, former secretary of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development. “It says to them, ‘They’re really interested in me. Maybe there is a chance for me out there.’ Anything you do to penetrate the neighborhoods is extremely valuable.”
Pugh began talking about the mobile jobs units on the campaign trail last year, and highlighted the plan in her State of the City address a month ago. She said the idea struck her in the early-morning hours, and she shared her thoughts in a phone call with Calvin G. Butler Jr., the CEO of BGE, to learn plans were underway for one.
Butler, a member of the Pratt board, contributed to Pugh’s mayoral campaign and was later named to her transition team.
He said library officials approached him a year ago to find out if BGE would sponsor a center to reach people who don’t know the library offers job services or who face transportation issues and other barriers to getting to the branches.
BGE paid $500,000 to sponsor the vehicle.
“No one can really apply for a job today if they can’t get online,” Butler said. “The library does a wonderful job once people get to the library, but many people can’t get to the library.
“If you get people in these neighborhoods employed, a lot of our issues go away.”
Daraius Irani, a Towson University economist, praised the idea, but noted that submitting an application is only one obstacle in the way of getting a job. To be fully successful, he said, the jobs center must help connect the applicants to programs that can help with transportation and affordable, quality child care.
“Many people want to work, but don’t have the means to work,” he said. “There are some great opportunities here and there are obviously some big challenges.”
Jason Perkins-Cohen, director of the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, said the jobs unit will supplement programs and outreach services available at Baltimore’s one-stop career development centers and libraries.
“It’s bringing the services to them and, at a minimum, introducing them to services available,” Perkins-Cohen said. “Everyone is starting in a different place. For some, they need access to a computer to apply online. For other residents, they’re making this first contact in the process.”
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