In 2023, we received answers from 134 skateboarding projects working in over 42 countries worldwide — who reached a combined 14,354 participants each week.
This year’s survey was available to complete in Portuguese, Finnish, French and English. A huge thank you to our translators who made that possible. If you would like to help us publish the future surveys in more languages, please get in touch.
The purpose of this annual survey — running since 2018 — is to better understand and document the aims, impact and activities of the social skateboarding world and to support social skate projects through the creation of resources, tailored trainings and access to the wider network.
In 2023, we see an increased focus on the soft skills associated with running skateboarding programs and working with (often marginalized and/or vulnerable) young people. While skateboarding still features in the top five most important skills for skate projects, the other selections emphasize the social elements of our projects: cultural understanding and respect, communication and mentoring skills, empathy and compassion from skateboard coaches.
This year, we also see the highest total combined budget of skate projects since launching the survey in 2018, demonstrating the remarkable resilience of projects returning to full strength after the challenges of COVID-19.
Overview of Key Results:
Who are the project participants?
What programs do the social skate projects offer?
These results align with the trends we saw last year with rises across the board. Most significantly, the percentage of projects offering weekly LGBTQI+ sessions has doubled again, and the number of projects hosting girls-only sessions rose by 13%. The percentage of remote sessions has continued to decrease, which we expect to see as programs worldwide are up and running again after COVID-19 restrictions have ended.
What are the annual budgets of skate projects worldwide?
The total combined budget of all 134 projects is 12,323,500 USD. These figures suggest that after the challenging period of lockdowns and program hiatus’, social skate projects around the world have sustained themselves and even developed their programs now that they are up and running again. This is the highest total combined budget we have seen since launching the survey in 2018.
Some projects who wrote ‘do not know’ commented that their project is in its initial stages, that they are currently applying for funding, or that they operate relying on small amounts of self-funded donations/donations from parents and friends.
A big thank you to all the projects that completed the Social Skate Survey in 2023:
Afghanistan
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bangladesh
Belgium
Brazil
Cambodia
Canada
Chile
Denmark
East Timor
Ethiopia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Iraq
Italy
Kenya
Lebanon
Lithuania
Madagascar
Mexico
Moçambique
Morocco
Nigeria
Norway
Palestine
Peru
Portugal
Rwanda
Sierra Leone
South Africa
South Sudan
Spain
Switzerland
The Netherlands
Trinidad and Tobago
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Zambia
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