Baltimore City Mayor Catherine Pugh has announced a mobile jobs center that will begin visiting high unemployment neighborhoods in May. The Mayor hopes to expand the fleet of vehicles before the end of the year.

As reported by The Baltimore Sun:

Paid for by the 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 dramatically higher when discouraged workers who are no longer considered part of the workforce are included.

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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.

For more information read the full article in The Baltimore Sun.