A Project for the Youth of Ghana
This is the first of its kind in Ghana, attaching a mini-Skate Bowl onto the already existing Volley Ball Court of a Local School. With very little money and a lot of heart an awesome, simple Skate Park has been built.
The Youth all pitched in and helped with the manual labour, to save money the earth was excavated by hand 2ft and the wall built up 2ft to reach the intended 4ft Drop-in. For environmental reasons (and to save more money), the normal Iron rods for the mat were replaced with a Bamboo mesh. Bamboo is used locally to replace iron-rods in many building sites, once encased in concrete, it is as strong as the iron-rods.
With no specialist equipment, and no prior building experience of Skate ramps, there was a struggle to get the transition angle correct, and one side ended up a little more Vert than was intended, but local skaters seem to manage with all the Sketchiness and even make good use of these perfect imperfections.
With two 4ft landings, approximately 18ft apart, and a Roll-in connecting to the Volley Ball court, Roots Rebel SK8 Park had been built. It didn’t take long before the youth were attempting a Roll-in, then soon after that they plucked up the courage and were nailing the Drop-in and it just took off from there. With help and guidance from some fantastic Skaters from Accra in addition to watching online instruction videos the local youth are now fairly competent Skaters.
Roots Rebel SK8 Park was finished on 28/10/2015 and even though the youth have been Skating for less than one year they had their first SKATE JAM-Competition on the 21/5/2016. Loads of Prizes were given out, donations from amazing Skateboarders Josh Peacock and Crew from the UK, and Skateboarding associations C.A.S.E from Canada and Saintaise2Skate from France.
Much of the additional funding, and contributions of Skateboards has come from a young skater Warre Carron (and his family) in Belgium, and also from Charlie Ekin and his school kids in the UK. A special shout out has to go to Robyn & Ryan in Accra and Jeni & Richard in UK for all their support and contributions of shoes, Boards and equipment.
Roots Rebel SK8 park is located in Peki, in the Volta Region of Ghana, come and Shred some concrete with us!
Find them on Facebook Here
AFRICA SKATEBOARDING DIARY 