UPDATE: Skateistan gets interior assistance

Interior building solutions group, Saint-Gobain Gyproc, joins the long list of companies assisting with the upcoming skateboarding school being built in Maboneng.

“Skateistan’s not just about skating. It’s about giving people life skills and hope for their future,” said Tony Hawk, a professional skateboarder and global Skateistan ambassador.

Skateistan is an international non-governmental organisation that uniquely uses skateboarding as a tool for empowerment. It was launched in 2007 in Afghanistan, where girls are not allowed to ride bicycles but are allowed to skateboard.

This campaign assists vulnerable youth between the ages of five and 17 from a range of ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds by using skateboarding as a hook to engage children in underprivileged areas and empower them through education programmes.

South African youth face many of the same challenges as young people in Afghanistan and Cambodia including social inequality, youth unemployment, gender discrimination, poverty, lack of quality education, and social tensions, all of which are issues which Skateistan’s programmes aim to address.

Construction is already well on its way for Skateistan, South Africa’s first skate school in the Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg, and it is the first on the continent.

The Johannesburg skate school, which is scheduled to be opened in August this year, consists of a building constructed using reclaimed shipping containers as classrooms and study areas, a world-class 500m² skate park, an outdoor educational space and office space for the non-governmental organisation to operate from.

Saint-Gobain Gyproc is sponsoring top quality walls and ceilings for the classrooms and offices. Apart from attributes related to efficiency and sustainability, the solutions group believes that its building materials can create an environment that is safer, more comfortable, healthier and generally more attractive than conventional building materials.

Improved and more comfortable learning spaces contribute to better learning environments, whereby learners and teachers can perform optimally, and the company has created a better learning environment in a number of valuable aspects.

Through this pioneering project, the group aims to demonstrate to other schools and educational facilities the immense difference that can be made by using superior building materials, in conjunction with builders, designers and architects, and how this combination can create better functioning, more comfortable and more productive environments that allow pupils and teachers to achieve their full potential.

Details: skateistan.org