Whirlpool (the appliance manufacturer) donated washers and driers to schools and increased attendance.
According to Whirlpool's research, one in five school children report difficulty finding clean clothes to wear to school. It turns out that offering free in-school laundry services to kids with attendance problems increases their attendance.
When compared to factors like economic opportunity, unemployment, and institutional racism, laundry seems pretty inconsequential in the fight to keep kids in school. But while that might be the case for their parents, for a ten-year-old who already has the odds stacked against them, having nothing clean to wear to school could be the deciding factor in whether or not they want to face their classmates that day.
I can remember my grandmother telling me that she thought lunches in schools were a wonderful innovation, because they didn't have anything like that when she was a girl, and many children couldn't come because they wouldn't have lunch. I'm sure back then nobody thought of lunch as something school should provide. Now apparently laundry is the next big innovation.
(Score: 2) by http on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:37AM
This increased welfare spending you bemoan is spent in a fight against a system that systematically removes money from people who produce wealth and gives it to people who already have more money - and that theft is growing, too.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:55AM
You say fight the system. I say enables it.