PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton was at a North Philadelphia laundromat Thursday morning, but she wasn’t doing the wash. She was checking out an early literacy initiative that’s taking place in some pretty unconventional places around the city.
Someone’s clothes were on a spin cycle as 3-year-old Dereck got a reading lesson just a few feet away.
“It would be really lovely if in all of the laundromats we had something like this,” said Dereck’s mom, Rosa Chavarria, through translator and community reading captain Karisa Barlow.
Entrepreneur Brian Holland operates five Laundry Cafes in the city, including this one, near Third Street and Allegheny Avenue. He said he noticed that the children's books he put out to occupy customers’ children would disappear.
“So we’d bring more of our own personal — and those would disappear. And what we realized was we were getting books into homes that otherwise might not have books,” Holland said.
Through a trade group, the Coin Laundry Association, Holland enlisted support from Too Small to Fail, a children’s initiative of the Clinton Foundation. And with further help from the William Penn Foundation, brightly colored chairs, tables and bookshelves were installed at this laundromat to create a place where adults can read to their kids.
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Holland says it’s an effort to take advantage of the two and a half hours a parent spends, on average, waiting for the wash with young kids in tow.
“That’s just idle, fallow time right now,” he said. “So if we can capitalize on that opportunity, then we can change that child’s trajectory.”
Vice Chair Chelsea Clinton visited the Laundry Café on Thursday to highlight the value of playful learning.
“We know from research that when there are warm, welcoming literacy spaces in laundromats like this one, literacy interactions go up 30 times,” she said.
“I think it would be very hard to be my mother’s daughter and not have this work be important to me — but now as a parent myself, I see on just an intimate and everyday basis the urgency of this work.”
Clinton and city officials toured other areas, including grocery stores and SEPTA stations, where unexpected learning opportunities have been springing up.