Oliver Percovich

On August 22, the Digital October center held a lecture by Oliver Percovich, the founder of the nonprofit educational organization Skateistan. Skateistan volunteers work in areas of armed conflict, in particular in Afghanistan: they teach local children how to skateboard, as well as giving them general education.

The Australian skateboarder Oliver Percovich decided to create this unique educational project after a visit to Afghanistan in 2007. In the beginning of 2008, he had already founded a Skateistan school in Kabul; in 2008, a filial of the school began to work in Pakistan, and again in 2011 in Cambodia.

The majority of the pupils of the school on Afghanistan, despite their young age, need to work: children’s labor is everywhere, especially as around half of the population of the country is made up of children under 18. During the period of the rule of the Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, Afghanistan’s educational system suffered greatly: education received an exclusively religious character, and education of woman was forbidden. The international community began to work on restoring the country’s educational system in 2001, but this process is still not proceeding very successfully: Afghanistan was ranked in 172^nd place in the Human Development Index (HDI) in 2011 out of 187 countries. 

Skateistan’s mission is not only to get children off the street and back into schools, but also to enable international and intercultural dialogue. In the opinion of the staff of the organization, skateboarding is only a lure to get children to come to school, where they will learn to work as a team, build relationships of trust, and be leaders, as well as other talents, which will help them be successful in life. The work of Skateistan in Kabul challenges stereotypes. Here, there are both children from poor families and children of officials, and there are sections of the school for handicapped children. In Skateistan, there are currently 400 students aged from 5 to 17, about half of which are girls. In addition to a skating park, various facilities have been opened for children: of photography, cinematography, programming, and others. In the course of his lecture, Oliver Percovich talked in detail about his educational project.