Stoked Mentoring
This project's parent organization is Stoked Mentoring Inc.
It operates in United States
It uses Skateboarding
Entered the Sport For Social Inclusion Award
More about Stoked Mentoring
Action Sports, also called extreme sports and adventure sports, is a media term for certain activities perceived as having a high level of inherent exhilaration. These activities often involve speed, height, a high level of physical exertion, specialized gear, or spectacular stunts. Some of the sports include snowboarding, surfing, skateboarding, BMX bicycle riding, and freestyle motocross. In action sports culture, "stoked" means that one is enthusiastic, excited, or motivated. By introducing at-risk youth to the basic life skills attached to each action sport, Stoked expands their horizons and opportunities for success, and gives them the support of a positive role model. Courage, perservance, and discipline, are all needed to learn action sports.
These same values are essential to suceed in life. Stoked believes that action sports are an ideal way to instill these life skills in at–risk and disadvantaged youth. These values are further reinforced by a positive role model and a supportive community. Stoked makes action sports accessible to a demographic, which typically are not given the opportunity to engage in these sports. Due to the expenses and travel associated with these sports, the far majority of the action sports population are Caucasian, successful, young professionals. Stoked offers at-risk youth in high density neighbors the opportunity to surf, snowboard, and skateboard, opening the door to the culture of action sports for its program youth, while also broadening the demographics that are included in the action sports community.
Through this exposure these teens are given unique, life-changing experiences that they never expected to be within their reach. Before joining Stoked, 98% of our teens in the program had never left their neighborhoods. For many mentees in Los Angeles, Stoked's Snowboard Mentoring program was the first time they saw snow. In New York, the majority of Stoked mentees had never been in the ocean before Surf Mentor. Through these experiences, horizon's are broadened, opportunities are realized, and great ambition is created.