An initiative that sought to ease Fort Smith’s economic woes eight years ago has been resurrected to do the same during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Work Fort Smith has been relaunched to connect anyone in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma who has been economically impacted through reduced hours or loss of employment to a source of income. The initiative, which originally served the region during the city’s 2012 recession caused by the shutdown of the Whirlpool plant, has “adapted with the times and updated with new technologies” to serve present-day needs, according to Work Fort Smith Director Miles Crawford.

“We’re kind of rolling it out,” he said. “There obviously wasn’t a lot of time, like everybody else, to kind of go along and prepare.”

The outbreak has caused the shutdown or scale-back of many service industries throughout the state, thus causing layoffs and loss of hours for employees. These economic effects have caused the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services to process tens of thousands of unemployment claims and receive hundreds of thousands of calls for claims each day, according to Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

These numbers are dwarfed by the estimated 3.3 million unemployment claims filed nationally as of Monday, according to a Work Fort Smith news release.

While Crawford said he believes the rural nature of the area will shield the Fort Smith region from unemployment levels seen in more metropolitan areas, he still wants to help as much as he can.

“More realistically, we’re looking at 15%,” Crawford said — a number representative of roughly 42,000 jobs in Sebastian, Crawford, Franklin, Sequoyah and LeFlore counties.

The initiative connects people to jobs “that are hiring to people who might not know where to go” like it did in 2012, Crawford said. Except now, the initiative utilizes regional promotions and social media more, the release states.

Aside from jobs themselves, Crawford hopes his initiative will prevent “societal ills” he said come along with job loss. He said he believes the opioid abuse and rise in foster care seen in Sebastian County was directly impacted by the area’s 2012 recession.

But first and foremost, he wants to provide people with income.

“It’s really there to consolidate as many regional job possibilities as possible,” he said.

Anyone economically impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak in the Fort Smith region may contact Work Fort Smith at www.work-fs.com.