Skateistan is a non-profit organization using skateboarding as a tool for empowerment to help young girls overcome the ban on young girls riding bicycles. Their main focus is to provide girls in Afghanistan with skateboards for they cannot ride bicycles. Once children latch onto skate, much more is possible: education, community and leadership.
Many who hear about this non-profit organization think this task is impossible to accomplish.
According to Mahendra Pruitt, “I think that they’ll be achieving their goals through donations and contributions from partner companies. There are millions of fundraisers going on in almost every school, the canned food drive that we held at Edison is an example of that. As their name grows in popularity, it’s evident that their goal and drive will gain more momentum, leading to more people catching on and helping out wherever they can.”
“I think that this will be important to girls in Afghanistan because they’ll have a chance to express themselves freely and rebel in their own way against the restrictions placed on them by where they live. I’d improve it to benefit other areas around the world by finding areas where civil rights are suppressed and offering an alternative way to express those rights in a way that would be deemed legal and acceptable.”