SkatePal is Making Skateboarding Accessible in Palestine
September 16, 2022
SkatePal, a UK-based nonprofit focused on promoting the social, health and wellbeing benefits of skateboarding to enhance the lives of local youth in Palestine, will soon be launching a new park. Construction of the concrete skatepark is underway in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine with the intent to provide orphaned girls with a safe space to learn and practice skateboarding. Partners Betongpark Ltd and Inash AlUsra (a Palestinian women's association) are helping with the project.
Since 2013, SkatePal has reached hundreds of young people across the West Bank and worked with communities affected by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict who face “severely limited access to cultural, educational and sporting opportunities.” The charity has focused its efforts on Palestine and its communities in need with the belief that skateboarding has the potential to dissolve barriers between class, race, age and gender.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has persisted since 1948 with the disagreements regarding territory and religion having devastating impacts on residents. According to UNICEF, in 2022 "more than 2.1 million people, including 934,000 children in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are increasingly vulnerable."
SkatePal was founded by Scotland native and skateboarder, Charlie Davis, after he visited Palestine and discovered that the sport had never been witnessed or practiced. He therefore worked with local communities to build skateparks and provide skateboarding lessons and equipment to young people across the West Bank, where sporting and education opportunities are limited. Now the charity has spaces in Qalqilya, Ramallah, Asira Al-Shamaliya and Zebabdeh with this new site on the way.
“These things [skateboarding] transpose boundaries and political situations to create a sense of community and self-confidence,” said Davis. “You do it in a team, but really, it’s you against yourself. It’s good for your mental and physical health. When you build a skatepark in the UK, antisocial behavior and crime go down. It really helps kids.”
SkatePal's Rosa Park in Asira Al-Shamaliya was the charity's second and is currently the largest. The 700sqm park was built in 2015 by twenty volunteers using locally sourced materials. Today, the volunteers (both local and international) host regular classes with a daily average attendance of 40 children alongside their families either participating or hosting picnics and interacting with the community.
The new skatepark, which will include a concrete mini ramp, wallride, ledge and more will be accessible once a week to local skaters and youth. The team will also re-fit an existing water well and remove the current water reserve tanks to create a larger space and provide cleaner water as water continues to be limited in Palestine.
SkatePal joins other community-oriented projects like EthopiaSkate and Megabiskate in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Ride It in Detroit, Skateistan in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa, 7Hills in Jordan, Bedouins in Tunisia and the All Nations Skate Project in North America. All these projects deploy skateboarding to empower youth who reside in locations and countries with deep-rooted issues of unemployment, violence, gender prejudices and access to education.
“[Skateboarding] is important in so far as its a form of play, and playing makes you feel connected with your environment and other people, and with yourself. I can only speak from my own perspective, but there’s something about that smooth flowing movement, and having small achievements with tricks that’s good for wellbeing. Personally, it makes me feel very present in the moment and helps me to feel balanced, focused and calm,” said SkatePal volunteer, Dani Abulhawa.
Source: Hypebeast