In March 2020, Tampa Elks Lodge #708 had to cancel the community “Suds and Stories” project they had planned with their 2019 Elks National Foundation Spotlight Grant because of COVID restrictions. More than a year later, they carried out a different version of the event with the approval of the Elks National Foundation. They partnered with Current Initiatives, a 501(c)(3) organization that offers free laundry events all over the country. The local representative made it very easy and explained that all they had to do was show up at 5821 Laundry in Tampa, Florida, with the supplies and quarters and five or six volunteers. On April 29 they assisted 13 families using 44 washers with the equivalent of 176 single loads. They provided pre-spray, liquid fabric softener, detergent pods, dryer sheets, laundry baskets or laundry bags, and hangers. Volunteers unloaded and loaded laundry from cars, bicycles and wagons and folded loads of clothes for the busiest customers. They also put $315.25 worth of quarters into machines. Clients included a man experiencing homelessness who had one small bag of laundry and a single parent who had so much laundry and bedding to wash that she couldn’t fit it and her kids in her car together so she had to make two trips. The remaining quarters and leftover supplies were donated to the Current Initiative Laundry Project to hold another laundry day. Lodge volunteers were Robert Bordonaro; Susie Harlow, PLP; Peggi Tuttle; Betty Orcutt, PLP; Bonnie Atwood; Paula Rousselle, Loyal Knight; Rita Smith, Leading Knight; and Andrew Watt, Elks National Foundation Legacy Scholarship recipient and grandson of Ted Bass.

Pictured are Bordonaro, Tuttle, Smith, Watts, Harlow and Orcutt.