Sara Campos remembers being impressed to start out skateboarding after taking part in Tony Hawk videogames on the California household’s PlayStation 2.
Campos, 23, who makes use of they/them pronouns, by no means dreamed they’d be a part of Tony Hawk’s charitable work. However final month, Campos was chosen for the primary class in The Skatepark Venture’s fellowship program. This system trains 12 various skateboarding lovers in neighborhood organizing and undertaking administration to have the ability to construct a skatepark of their neighborhoods. Not solely does this system hope to create a brand new gathering place in minority communities. It additionally goals to assist and prepare younger minority leaders.
“It’s nearly like a dream come true,” stated Campos, who used to attract skatepark designs on printer paper to indicate their mother and father. “Getting to do this once more, however for actual this time, is a type of belongings you didn’t truly assume would occur.”
It’s nearly precisely what Hawk hoped for when he launched this initiative.
“With this program, we’re partaking these children — not solely to advocate for a skatepark for his or her use but additionally to appreciate that their voices can matter, that they will impact change,” Hawk stated. “When you’re a metropolis on the lookout for extra tasks which are inclusive, which are various, I feel skateboarding is on the prime of the record today.”
Hawk, who received 73 championships by age 25 and was world champion of vert skating for 12 straight years within the Eighties and ’90s, famous that the game has modified dramatically through the years. He now not hears folks shouting, “White boy sport,” at him whereas he’s on his board.
He now sees a big selection of races and genders when he visits skateparks. It’s a shift that he hopes to foster together with his nonprofit work.
“My fashion was so mechanical that I turned an outcast throughout the skate neighborhood, however I did discover my very own sense of identification and neighborhood on the skatepark,” Hawk stated. “It’s a person pursuit, however you might be bolstered by the neighborhood round you. After which they assist you in your endeavors.”
Neftalie Williams, a sociologist and professional on skateboarding tradition in addition to a provost postdoctoral scholar at USC’s Annenberg Faculty of Communication and Journalism, stated he’s excited by the prospect of getting skateparks constructed via the fellowship program.
“These younger folks care passionately about skateboarding and are actually getting coaching to have the ability to perform their mission and get the work executed,” Williams stated. “It’s not simply getting the skatepark constructed or getting information inside these younger folks’s fingers. They’re gonna have generational information that’s going to handed down and there are only a few issues that enable that.”
The Skatepark Venture – which started because the Tony Hawk Basis in 2002, funded by Hawk’s $125,000 win on the movie star version of “Who Desires to Be a Millionaire” – noticed the fellowship as a response, of kinds, to the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Hawk stated he believes the fellowship may also help tackle racial inequality in addition to present alternatives for a brand new technology of minority leaders.
Williams, who can also be on The Skatepark Venture’s board of administrators, recalled Hawk and his staff saying: “How will we do extra? There’s a racial reckoning that’s occurring. There must be extra illustration (in skateboarding) for LGBTQ+ communities. There must be extra work for Indigenous people. How do you’re taking this platform and actually take it to the following degree, actually empower the following technology?”
Creating a brand new technology of skateboarding advocates who additionally perceive the mechanics of neighborhood organizing is a part of the reply.
Nicole Humphrey, program coordinator for the fellowship, needs every fellow to create a skatepark that displays their neighborhood and its wants, whereas additionally being economically sustainable. However she additionally needs them to really feel that they will apply what they be taught on this fellowship to future tasks past skateboarding, from constructing different public areas of their communities to creating their voices heard on points that concern them.
“What I discovered very early is there wasn’t a guide or something to reference,” stated Humphrey, a neighborhood organizer who additionally co-founded the nonprofit Black Ladies Skate, devoted to supporting minority skate boarders. “There’s nothing prefer it. We’re actually truthfully constructing it from scratch, and it’s been enjoyable. However I feel my entry level was actually simply being within the organizing house.”
Although the Skatepark Venture fellowships started solely in September, Campos, a communications and digital advertising and marketing specialist at Utopia PDX, has already discovered a lot about what they should do to construct a skatepark in Northeast Portland, one that may be “an area the place when you present up, you simply really feel such as you belong there.”
Campos additionally acquired loads of info they will use for Queer Skate PDX, the nonprofit they co-founded to assist ladies, LGBTQ+ and gender nonconforming folks getting began in skateboarding by providing them wanted tools and sponsoring occasions to satisfy different skaters.
“As an individual of shade who lives in a state that’s predominantly white, it makes it just a little bit more durable to seek out neighborhood teams that you may relate to,” stated Campos, whose household is from Guam. “I had the concept of attempting to prioritize and uplift all of those marginalized communities, in addition to serving everybody as an entire.”
Campos stated the fellowship has given them a deeper information concerning the historical past of skateboarding in addition to what the game has executed for them.
“Skating has introduced me a bunch of mates and connections and neighborhood that I’d not have if it wasn’t for skating,” Campos stated, including that in addition they met their accomplice, Rochelle, via the game. “It’s taught me loads by way of falling down and getting again up. It’s taught me loads about braveness.”
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