I'm Oliver Percovich. I'm an Australian
skateboarder. I grew up in Papua New Guinea
I subsequently traveled to over 50 countries
and I've spent the last 7 years in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan I started an NGO called Skateistan
which uses skateboarding to
connect children to education.
This was never my plan
let me tell you the story
of how it happened
in 2007 I followed my girlfriend to Kabul
where she had a job as a researcher
I was also looking for a job as a researcher
and I've been a skateboarder 
since I was 6 years old
so wherever I've traveled I've always
brought my skateboard with me
and Kabul was no exception
and I skateboarded in
the street with friends in Kabul and
Afghans were fascinated. They'd never
seen anything like it before and both
boys and girls wanted to try out the -- try
out the skateboard. Now Afghanistan is
full of young people. Half of the
population is under the age of 16
70% is under the age of 25
and it really
shocked me to see firsthand the role
that women played in society. Most women
didn't have jobs. Most girls didn't go to
school. There weren't any women drivers
on the road. There weren't any girls
riding bicycles because it was deemed
culturally inappropriate. All of the
popular sports were seen as activities
just for boys, not for girls. I thought to
myself how is it possible that I've been
skateboarding with girls in the street
but they're not allowed to play these
other sports? And I realized
skateboarding was a loophole. It was so
new that nobody had had a chance to say
the girls couldn't do it yet. So I
thought, "I'm gonna I'm gonna try to, I
want to try to expand this, expand this
idea." And I was really excited about it.
And not everybody shared my enthusiasm.
Most people were pretty cynical and they
thought, what, why would, what's the use of
skateboarding in Afghanistan? What is it
going to do for anybody?
I'd been skateboarding for over 25 years
in the streets and people had been
telling me not to skate in the streets,
so a couple more people weren't going to
change my mind. I hadn't, I didn't have
any money to follow this, to follow this
idea. I was living on less than $10 a
week. I was sleeping on friends' couches.
It was a really difficult time. I started
to question my sanity: What was I doing
in one of the most dangerous cities in
the world -- with electricity every third
day for two hours and far away from
friends and family? But these daily
skateboard sessions with children kept
me going and I hung, I hung in there.
We were skateboarding in an abandoned
fountain. It was this empty fountain that
was perfect for skateboarding in and got
girls and boys from the whole area would
come there -- from different ethnicities
from different
social backgrounds. There was one day in
particular that really changed
everything for me. It was a girls' session
and there were girls from the nearby
apartment blocks which was quite middle
class as well as really poor girls that
were working in in that area. And they're
all skateboarding together and they had
so much fun -- they were shrieking while
they were skateboarding. At the end of it
they all sat around the fountain, which
you can see, and they started to sing a
song together and after they finished
singing the song they held hands and
they started to dance around the
fountain. And this is not what usually
happens after a skateboard session most
places in the world.
I saw there a microcosm of what
Afghanistan's future needed. It needed
people from different ethnicities to
come together, from different social
backgrounds, for trust to be built for
community to be built and those elements
-- trust and community -- would lead to
outcomes in health, in education, in
security. One of the poorest girls that
was coming to that, to these skateboard sessions was a girl
named Fazilia. She was 12 years old and
she was supporting her family by begging
in the street. And I heard that her
parents had recently pulled her out of
school so that she could beg full-time
in the street and so through an Afghan
co-worker, Shams, we approached the
parents and pitched this idea: Would
Fazilia be able to be a skateboard
instructor and earn a little bit of
income that way and if she had this job
would they allow her to go back to
school? The parents agreed with this idea.
Fazilia was rapt to go back to school
and there, the link between skateboarding
and education in Afghanistan was first
made. That's five years ago. Since then
Skateistan has gone on to build the two
largest indoor sports facilities in
Afghanistan and there's another one in
Cambodia in Phnom Penh
These these facilities have a thousand
children that come to them weekly all
between the ages of five and 17 and they
come for skateboarding and they stay for
education. The dreams of the children are
different to those of their parents.
They've got a shared identity through
skateboarding and they've got a unique
community that gets built. That community
can create hope in a place where
sometimes it's impossible to have hope.
On September 8, 2012 there was a suicide attack
on an international military base
in Kabul.
Four Skateistan students were
killed in that attack.
Khorshid, her sister Parwana, Eeza and Nawar
were all there outside the
base selling trinkets and begging from
soldiers. The Skateistan community
rallied around at this point and
supported the family with food with
wood for heating in winter. They held
ceremonies in the skate park and even
the graves of the sisters Khorshid and Parwana,
were dug by a skateboard instructor. About two weeks later I was in the Kabul
skate park and I was really happy to see
the younger brother of Eeza there. He
was in the skate park and he was skating
his heart out. He was just ripping around
the place and he could tell that he was
in a safe space. This was a release for
him in a really difficult time. He was
celebrating something that both him and
his brother loved. The local community
created through skateboarding can also
transcend international barriers. When
somebody sees a picture of a young girl
in Afghanistan on a big ramp and she's
dropping in and she's achieved something
that she thought was impossible she
also becomes the subject of respect, not
pity in those people's eyes. Skateistans
also change the perception of Afghans
and skateboarders around the world
humanizing both in the process. This
human element is important to remember
when we're talking about aid. Aid is
usually, it usually works in a top-down
model where a really rich country like
Australia gives money towards a poor
country like Afghanistan and there's
often a disconnect between the people
that are making decisions about aid and
then the recipients on the other end.
Skateistan was led by the students. They
were invested in it being a success. They
made it a success. Aid should be based on
caring and respect, not pity. Today the
image coming from Afghanistan of a young
man with a big beard, an ak-47, can be
contrasted with that of a smiling girl
on a skateboard. Globally, only about 5%
of skateboarders are girls.
In Afghanistan, 40% of skateboarders are girls.
Skateboarding is now the largest female
sport in Afghanistan. But the key is not
skateboarding, the key is the power of
sharing something that you love. And with
persistence, it can grow into something
quite unexpected and truly amazing.
Thank you.
