Friday 21 January 2011

Young Australians changing the world - with skateboards

I first got wind of this story via Truthdig -

... As soon as Australian skateboarders Oliver Percovich and Sharna Nolan dropped their boards in Kabul in 2007, they were surrounded by the eager faces of children of all ages who wanted to be shown how to skate. Stretching out the three boards they had brought with them, they developed a small skate school...
The founders’ success with their first students prompted them to think bigger: by bringing more boards back to Kabul and establishing an indoor skateboarding venue, they would be able to teach many more youth, and also be able to provide older girls with a private facility to continue skateboarding.
Check out skateistan.org and (coming soon to the Sundance Film Festival) the movie:



Following on from the theme developed in a previous post, the basis of their intervention is nothing new (in essence a youth development model), but goddamn it's a good one.  And the Doco don't look as if it'll be 'arf bad either.

All power to them, I reckon!  Fantastic stuff!

Update:  My 15-year old just nonchalantly told me that she's known of this mob for a year or two!!  Doh!

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