Skateistan and Pushing Boarders have just published their 2019 worldwide survey of social skateboarding projects. This is the second annual global survey of social skate projects, which includes answers from 124 initiatives in over 55 countries – who reach a combined 18,000 participants each week.
The survey found that 42% of projects worldwide now involve women as staff members, in leadership training or as volunteers. This is up 10% from last year, when the number was just 32%.
There’s also an increase in projects giving opportunities to youth participants. 58% of projects now involve youth as leaders or volunteers, showing a growth in youth-led programming.
Also encouraging is a dramatic increase in the number of projects that now have an active Child Protection Policy. 40% of projects surveyed have a Child Protection Policy in place, up from just 25% in 2018.
Gender Inclusion, Youth Leadership and Child Protection are all key focus areas of Skateistan’s knowledge-sharing initiative: the Goodpush Alliance. In the past year, Goodpush has published a Child Protection Toolkit, run webinars on the topic and hosted workshops at Goodpush events held in Copenhagen and Johannesburg.
Rhianon Bader, Goodpush Manager at Skateistan said: “It’s really encouraging to see that so many social skate projects are taking the issue of Child Protection seriously and we’re stoked that it seems the resources that Goodpush provides on this have been useful. There’s still more work to be done though, as only 18% of projects rated their policies as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ so we really want to focus on supporting them to improve in this area over the next year.”
The second edition of the survey also included new questions related to:
- LGBTQI inclusion
- Mental health and well-being
- Sources of funding
- How impact data is collected
The Goodpush Alliance was set up in 2018 by Skateistan to support social skate projects around the world. The annual survey of social skate projects is a key tool in assessing where the sector is at and what resources and support are needed.
Rhianon said: “The survey results are really key in helping us to shape our focus for Goodpush over the next year. It’s so encouraging to see so many projects making use of the resources and support available. Over the next year we want to grow our community so that we can share ideas, knowledge and inspiration across a whole network of social skate projects. There are so many incredible organizations out there, doing amazing stuff to reach children and young people through skateboarding. We want to be able to connect and support these organizations so that the whole sector can get bigger and better.”
