For 8 months we were skateboarding, doing a lot of yoga and cooking food together. We tried to be helpful and inviting for the refugees and all other kids who joined us down the road.
By the end of the course all kids were more determined than ever to continue their journey with skateboarding and with sport more broadly.
Hannover, Germany
When it comes to skateboarding learning curve, it could be quite tricky, you can stuck anywhere, so it's crucial to determine weaknesses first. Especially in this case, a lot of the kids still had PTSD when we began skateschool.
It was not a trivial task to create a safe and engaging environment where students can let go of all of their thoughts and fears and go with a flow of motion.
Precisely because of that, we knew from the get go, that we need to dive deeper into the culture first, so it became second nature for them.
Even though we approached it like a traditional skate school, it was pretty obvious that this time around a lot of psychological prep work had to be done to allow kids to feel safe and secure first.
It is hard to imagine what some of them had to go through, so we took a mild, gradual approach to course progression.
Despite all of that, we established a candid connection early on, thanks to the amazing team of Gleis-D skatehalle and all volunteers that came along to join us. We had the whole park at our disposal on a given day, so the learning program became more intense and engaging as we started to advance.
Kids participated
Days / week
Months period
Before Yurii came to us, we were bored. I’m surprised that I can already ride, push, and move freely as I practiced skateboarding only once in Ukraine. Yurii is natural born teacher.
Vadim
age 12
from Zhytomyr Oblast
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