Skateboarding and Life Skills

Project Kasi is a Project providing skateboarding and Life skills programs for primary and high school youth in the Nyanga Township. The program has created partnership with some local organisations that are on a mission of developing under privileged communities. The goal is to foster a commitment to young people that will promote pro-social friendship, strong interpersonal skill, and reassert a sense of hope in the future. Only through personal relationships can a sense of individual responsibility be re-established that will give youth the commitment to follow through on path to adulthood with a sense of pride and accomplishment.

We use skateboarding as a tool to engage with the hard to reach primary and high school youth in the Nyanga Township. Through repeated failures in the classroom and the development of destructive habits, at-risk young people have lost faith in the possibilities that await them if they are successful in putting their lives together. To accomplish this goal young people must be in a caring, inclusive learning and safe environment that promotes their best effort and reinforce their best effort and reinforces personal respect.

Project Kasi is a program that is in direct response to the growing number of young people that are falling through cracks at school or their community. The goal of the program is to identify youths who are going to have a turbulent transition to adulthood and offer positive support system to avoid the pitfalls that can derail their lives. The focus is slightly different at each level but the goal is remains the same; empower the young person to make positive changes in his/her life.

History

It all started with Theo Poswayo the Founder of the Organisation with an idea of changing how we live in our community, New Crossroads Nyanga the “murder capital” of South Africa. Essentially he took note that in our day’s young kids is falling through cracks at an early age with a lost sense hope in the future waiting for them. It’s so painful to witness a group of young youth smoking drugs, drinking alcohol and turning into gangsters.

In 2016 He got so tired of how things work in our community and decided to start a skateboarding program on the in a park that’s in his neighborhood in Nyanga with an amount of four skateboards that he had. He gathered kids and started teaching them life skills and skateboarding. On the first day he started with 8 participants ranging from the age of 7 years to 13 years old. On the second week he had 53 kids and we had to share four skateboards with 53 kids and the number kept on rising up. It was a great experience to see the progress of a kid who knew nothing about skateboarding being able to skate with a mind filled with a sense hope of and bright future ahead.

The program went on smoothly up until I didn’t have enough cash in to finance the work such as buying second hand skateboards, spare parts, internet and printing. On the 13^th of October 2016 we decided to suspend the program. It was a painful period, kids would ask us when is the program starting and we would say soon. On the 7^th of April 2017 we decided to activate the skateboarding program, we were happy the kids were happy everyone was happy.