On Thursday, June 10, the LaundryCares Foundation will host a Free Laundry and Literacy Day, in collaboration with Too Small to Fail and Big Heart World. This event will be held from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m. at Indyland II Laundromat in Indianapolis.
Free Laundry and Literacy Day events provide free laundry services and cleaning products, plus free food and fun activities for children and adults to enjoy. Laundry owners, distributors, manufacturer employees and local community members will participate as volunteers helping to facilitate this event.
As part of the event, a new Family Read, Play and Learn Center will be installed within this laundromat. These learning and play spaces provide a comfortable seating area, high-quality books, toys and other materials designed to help parents engage in literacy-rich interactions with their children during laundry time.
“Everyone is excited to help this new store open its doors and already give back to the neighborhood the business will serve,” said Dan Naumann, executive vice president of the LaundryCares Foundation. “We’re especially grateful for the installation of the new Family Read, Play and Learn Center here. It’s perfect for this location.”
Similar learning spaces have been installed in laundromats across the U.S. through the Laundry Literacy Coalition – a partnership between Too Small to Fail and the LaundryCares Foundation.
In fact, an independent evaluation conducted by New York University discovered that placing Family Read, Play and Learn Centers in laundromats had an overwhelmingly positive effect on children’s literacy-related activity during their visits. In total, throughout the course of the evaluation, researchers observed 1,378 instances of literacy-related activities in laundromats with these spaces, compared to laundromats without them.
Millions of families in under-resourced communities visit laundromats each week to fulfill the basic need of having clean clothes. For many of these families, fulfilling this basic need can often be a challenge. With that in mind, Indyland II Laundromat, the LaundryCares Foundation and Too Small to Fail are excited and honored to offer a day of free laundry services for those in the neighborhood. Guests can bring an unlimited amount of laundry to the event and will receive free laundry products to help clean their clothes.
While the guests do their laundry, children can engage in early literacy activities with the Indianapolis Public Library and puppet making with master puppeteer Marilyn Price. Free children’s books will be distributed to the families at the event.
This event also will serve to launch Big Heart World’s Loads of Summer Love, an effort to provide families with fun, location-specific games to promote children’s social-emotional development while doing the laundry. Big Heart World is presented by Sparkler Learning in collaboration with Noggin, Nickelodeon’s interactive learning service for preschoolers.
As part of this initiative, Sparkler Learning will send activity posters and coloring sheets to more than 100 laundromats across the country. It will also make songs from Noggin’s “Big Heart Beats” album and other Big Heart World content available – so that families can sing, dance and learn together about understanding feelings, developing confidence, making friends, celebrating differences and more.
“We hope Loads of Summer Love will help parents turn laundry time into learning time, helping kids grow big hearts with the characters they love while doing the laundry with their grownups!” explained Michael H. Levine, senior vice president for learning and impact at Noggin.
Sparkler Learning Executive Director Julia Levy added, “We’re grateful to the LaundryCares Foundation and Too Small to Fail for their partnership and commitment to bringing learning to families where they are.”
