Skateistan Launches Goodpush Alliance Online Toolkit For Social Skateboarding Projects
Non-profit organisation, Skateistan, is aimed at empowering children through skateboarding and education based in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa have launched Goodpush, an online resource toolkit to offer support to other social skateboarding projects from around the world.
Press Release: Skateistan’s Goodpush Alliance Launches Online Toolkit to Support Social Skateboarding Projects Worldwide
- Results of first ever Social Skateboarding Projects Survey published.
- 90% of social skateboarding projects surveyed said they would find online resources helpful.
- The Goodpush Alliance is Skateistan’s new global platform to support skateboarding for development.
Today, The Goodpush Alliance launched the first online resource toolkit for social skateboarding projects worldwide. The Goodpush Alliance, which was formed by Skateistan last year, aims to create a global network of skateboarding for development organizations and to help share knowledge, ideas and good practice in order to increase collective impact.
In June 2018, Skateistan, together with Pushing Boarders, conducted the first-ever worldwide survey of social skateboarding projects. Over 100 skate projects responded from over 50 countries and 90% of the respondents said they would make use of free online resources to assist in running their skate projects. In response to this, Goodpush has now published a toolkit of resources which is freely available online.
Skateistan’s Skate Project Specialist, Rhianon Bader, who runs The Goodpush Alliance said:
“Today is a really exciting day for social skateboarding projects around the world. The idea behind The Goodpush Alliance is to increase our combined impact by bringing all these amazing social skateboarding projects together so we can share our ideas, knowledge and successes. The survey showed us that there is a huge variety of projects around the world, from the budgets available to the programs being delivered, but what unites everyone is a belief in skateboarding as a force for good. By working together, we can all get even better at what we do and reach more children and young people with safe, high-quality programs.”
One-third of the skate projects who responded to the survey have an annual budget of 5,000 USD or less. Just over one quarter (28%) of the projects have one or more full-time paid staff member and 65% of them depend on part-time volunteers.
43% of the combined beneficiaries are female and one-third of the projects have at least one female staff member. Just under 5% of all beneficiaries are living with a disability.
The aims of social skate projects are very much aligned, with 71% saying they wanted to grow the local skate community and 70% saying they aimed to develop life skills among their participants.
There are also clear areas for development which the toolkit aims to respond to. The top three areas which the social skate projects would like to develop further are:
- Inclusion of girls and young women (62%)
- Community outreach and relations (53%)
- Youth leadership/volunteer programs (47%)
- Child protection (65% of projects do not have a documented Child Protection Policy in place).
By bringing together knowledge from around the sector, The Goodpush Alliance hopes to help social skate projects to develop their programs and learn from other organizations. The main categories of resources in the toolkit are Programs, Building Community and Behind the Scenes and there are nine sub-topics in all.
Rhianon said of the toolkit:
“This is a resource that will keep on evolving and we encourage everyone who’s working with a social skate project to become a part of The Goodpush Alliance and help us to make it even better. Please keep sharing your feedback, ideas and stories with us so that as a sector, we can get even better at empowering children and young people through skateboarding.”
The Goodpush Alliance is a Skateistan project which is funded by the WeWork Creator Award, which Skateistan won in 2017.
