The Philosophy of Skateboarding
Skateboarding is a practice that benefits everyone, regardless of age, gender, background, or religion. It brings people together which is particularly important within Jordan where people and societies are segregated and tend not to mix due to the lack of common spaces. As such, skateboarders are able to form supportive communities based on shared mental and physical challenges developed through learning new tricks. This open, inclusive, and accepting community helps marginalized young people in Jordan come together and co-learn to overcome the challenges they face.
Seven Hills uses skateboarding as a tool for social inclusion, breaking socioeconomic, gender, and religious barriers. Everyone is welcome at our skateparks and sessions. We work with diverse people across all our programs from ladies’ first skate sessions, skate sessions for youth with special needs, and neighborhood skate sessions, in which all youth can come and play together. We reach 17 diverse nationalities including displaced communities, people with disabilities, and Amman’s most socioeconomically challenged populations.
Seven Hills aims to empower these young people through the act of skateboarding. Through a process of trying new things, falling, failing, and mastering, young people in Jordan learn and develop valuable social and life skills. Creating a safe and free-to-use environment that overcomes the segregation of Jordanian society and creates peer-to-peer learning which is integral to our Youth Leadership Program and creating a self-sustained organization.
Programs Reach
In 2023 alone, the total number of participation in our programs reached over 4400. This number includes recurrent participants which join our activities regularly, divided between over 1709 unique participants. 42% of the total participation are girls and 41% are displaced communities.
Participating community members are aged between 2 and 35 years old. Crucially, these are not just Jordanian people but also Syrian, Palestinian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Iraqi, Egyptian, Somalian, and Sudanese, which is essential to create community cohesion in Jordan as a place of refuge in the region. We create safe spaces for young people to meet, play and grow, reaching some of Jordan’s most marginalized youth.
Female Participation
Locality
Neighborhood Skate Program
At Seven Hills Skatepark, we run multiple sessions every week that are free-of-charge and open to the public. These sessions are designed to support beginner skateboarding and create an open and inclusive environment for all local children to play together. On average we reach 132 children from 17 nationalities per month through our neighborhood skate sessions. Our Youth Leaders create a safe environment for a fun skate session, as well as help with equipment, coaching, and providing good vibes for participants to learn and have a good time.
“I like Seven Hills because the people who work there respect me and I am respecting them”
12 years-old, Kenyan boy who participated in neighborhood skate sessions for 3 months
Partner Skate Sessions
Seven Hills also runs skate sessions in partnership with local and international NGOs. Through these partnerships, Seven Hills is able to run a large number of targeted skate sessions for disadvantaged youth from Amman and other cities in Jordan. In these sessions, we combine skateboarding with informal education whereby skateboarding serves as a tool for social development and psycho-social support. We work with partner organizations to respond to the immediate needs of participants whilst aligning with longer-term goals and outcomes to address the diverse social-cultural identities we work with. Through these classes we have worked with youth with special needs, youth affected by displacement, youth living in refugee camps, and young people from cities in Jordan with difficulties accessing youth development programming.
“Today was really special and fun, like a field trip. I hope we can come to the program again.”
11 years-old, Palestinian boy who participated in the Partner Skate Sessions from Jerash Refugee Camp for 6 months
The Skate Bus & Outreach Program
From conducting skate outreach activities in different areas in Jordan, and our various interactions with the youth that visit the Seven Hills Skatepark, we identified a challenge, that of which, children don't always have the ability to come to Seven Hills because of the physical distance.
In comes The Skate Bus; it was introduced with the idea of “if you can’t come to the skatepark, the skatepark will come to you”.
The bus carries mobile skate ramps, which when installed act as a temporary skatepark, and similar to a concrete skatepark it will encapsulate the entire culture of skateboarding, where the children will be introduced to skateboarding, not only through practice, but also through visuals, skate videos, graphics, and interactions with skate teachers.
The Skate Bus outreach program is the step prior to building a concrete skatepark; it plants the seed of a skate community and a permanent skatepark in the areas where we will be collaborating with municipalities and local governments.
The permanent skatepark will then act as a catalyst for the development of a proper public park that serves the entire community; men and women, old and young, local, refugee, migrant, and ex-pat. We reached a number of over 2000 overall participation in 2023 with a 50% girl participation rate.
“I now know how to express myself and speak, I can explain my opinion in a better way”
15 years old, Syrian girl who participated in outreach skate sessions for 6 months