A community outreach photograph showing volunteers assisting families during a Current Initiatives' Laundry Project event. Captured in a high-angle medium-wide shot on the sidewalk outside a laundromat, two male volunteers in gray t-shirts kneel and bend down to engage with two young children. On the left, a volunteer wearing a black baseball cap and a cream volunteer apron leans over to talk with a child in a green YMCA athletic jersey. On the right, another volunteer crouches down to help a young child in a yellow shirt with purple hair beads who is reading a colorful activity book, set against front-loading commercial washing machines under bright daylight.
Current Initiatives’ Laundry Project Credit: Courtesy / Current Initiatives

For most of us, a pile of laundry is an annoyance. For others, it’s one of the many barriers to a better quality of life.

Over the last 17 years, Tampa-born nonprofit Current Initiatives has helped families climb that mountain with a simple act of kindness: doing their laundry for free.

Founder Jason Sowell recently told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that to date during 1,241 events, Current’s Laundry Project has dropped into 76 cities in 22 states, worked with 183 laundromats and served nearly 34,000 families. Along the way, they’ve processed 357,562 loads weighing nearly 3.6 million pounds.

That kind of work takes money, however, and Tampa Bay artists are chipping in this weekend during a helmet art show featuring the work of folks like Derek Donnelly, Saori Murphy, Josh Pearson, Zulu Painter and the Vitale Bros.

Proceeds benefit Current Initiatives.

The Soap N’ Hope Charity Helmet Art Show happens Saturday, Nov. 7 from 7 p.m.-10 p.m. at VooDoo Brewery in St. Petersburg.

Voodoo Brewing Co.

220 4th St. N, St. Petersburg

Brewpub

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UPDATED 11/05/26 1:46 p.m. There won’t be a motorcycle raffe.

This article appears in Nov. 05 – 11, 2026.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...