As part of our global commitment to anti-racism in skateboarding, the Pushing Against Racism (PAR) working group recently released a new resource and hosted a webinar related to making our skateboarding organizations more representative through intentional self-assessment.
Webinar Re-Cap
On August 15th, Pushing Against Racism hosted a webinar on DIY Organizational Anti-Racism where we were joined by 20 attendees from 13 countries. This webinar was full of practical information that enlightened us to see the ways racism can be perpetuated in each and every level of a skateboarding NGO, skate company, sports association/federation/committee, or any other form of organization. The perspectives shared by our guest speakers from three different continents, provided some real-life examples of what we can do and be aware of in order to create and sustain anti-racist organizational governance, values, and practices.
The webinar was facilitated by Kyle Burns, who's a PAR Working Group member as well as a lifelong skateboarder and Equal Employment Opportunity Practitioner & Mediator with the USA federal government. Our guest speakers were:
- Tim van Asdonck, Board Member and former Programmes Director of the Concrete Jungle Foundation
- Susie Halsell, Founder of Bangladesh Street Kids Aid (BSKA) & Technical Expert for UNICEF Bangladesh
- and Alberto Santos who specializes in Sports Psychology and works with the organization Love CT Inclusao e Resgate in Brazil
In case you missed the webinar or want to share it with others, you can watch the recording below!
New Self-Assessment Tool
The PAR Organizational Self-Assessment Tool is a starting point for self-evaluation within your skateboarding organization or community initiative.
Use this tool to have an honest conversation about how ready your organization might be to start addressing racism within the organization itself. Where are you now? And what would it take to become more Principled?
This tool is designed to help you break down the large problem of addressing racism in your organization into smaller, more bounded parts. Doing this reveals the way racism is embedded in our organizational structures and systems and doesn’t exist in our individual biases and behaviors alone.
You can find the Organizational Anti-Racism Self-Assessment PDF on the Goodpush Library here.
The PAR Working Group is co-coordinated by The Goodpush Alliance and other social skateboarding organizations worldwide. If you have any ideas for future Pushing Against Racism webinars or are interested to learn more about being a part of the PAR Working Group, please email antiracism(at)goodpush.org.
