In the summer of 2018, Jason Sowell told CL about how modern interpretations of a certain son of a carpenter weren’t what he perceived that person to be.
“The mass of society in his day were not flocking to Jesus because he was telling them what was wrong with them and why they were going to hell,” Sowell, founder of the nonprofit Current Initiatives, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
“They were flocking to him because he gave value to the disvalued, hope to the hopeless, fed people that were hungry, hugged people who were untouched because of disease, preached equality to the injustice of discrimination, and healed people that were broken.”
So, the same city where one pastor says he will cure Florida of coronavirus, Sowell—who’s got a B.S. in Church Ministries from Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville—will once again try to find a way to make actions speak louder than words.
“Over the past few weeks our mantra has become ‘Do what you can,’ especially as things change on a daily basis” Sowell said in a video announcing new outreach from Current Initiative’s Laundry Project. “Clean laundry is a health and wellness issue that affects mental and physical states.”
Starting March 25, Current, together with the City of Tampa, is spending six weeks at four different Tampa laundromats paying for the laundry of needy community members—plus hospitality workers left without jobs—in this time of unprecedented trouble and uncertainty.
The locations are Seminole Heights Laundromat (103 W. Osborne Ave.), Ybor City’s Bay Laundromat (5030 E 10th Ave.) plus two Big Wash locations in West Tampa (1724 W. Main St.) and Sulphur Springs (908 E. Waters Ave.)
Families interested in washing must pre-registered through Current’s partner organizations including:
- Dress For Success Tampa Bay
- Urban Young Life
- Crossover Church
- Locale Church
- Potter Elementary School
- King State
- Commune & Co.
- Bartender & server networks are being coordinated through The Bricks Ybor & Bar at Armature
The washes will last four hours, and time slots will be assigned to pre-registered families.
Gloved volunteers will start the machines for families using quarters or a phone app. Depending on the size of the laundromat no more than five to eight families will be allowed in the laundromat per hour; just 20 individuals, including Current volunteers, will be allowed in the building. For safety, no children or people over 60 years old will be allowed, and Current is encouraging customers to wait in their vehicles after starting their machines for the duration of the wash and dry cycles. Families may be limited as far as the number of loads they can do, depending on the capacity of machines on site. Every other week of the initiative will include an extra day for hospitality workers.
“We will leave enough time in between for the occasional random walk-up family if needed and accepted on a case-by-case basis,” Sowell wrote in a plan outlining the project. A laundromat employee or Current volunteer will be on-site with sanitizer to wipe down all door handles and touched surfaces throughout the projects.
Each location will be staffed by city officials for crowd control, and the dates aren’t being announced to prevent crowds—families, including hospitality, must register in advance to wash their clothes for free. Sowell, hopes to do the same thing in St. Petersburg, but he needs some help right away. That’s why he’s got a crowdfunding campaign going online where good samaritans can sponsor a load ($10), family ($25), supplies ($200) or a full project $1,000.
More information is at give.classy.org/covidlp.
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This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2020.
