Elshadi (red helmet) and her two friends are from Wochelemi and run regular skate classes for the children of the town. Photo: Jon Burns

How did you wind up in Ethiopia?In 1999 I departed Australia to take the position of regional Creative Director for McCann Erickson advertising stationed in Jeddah. My region was from Yemen to Poland and the horn of Africa and it included Ethiopia. It was on one of my trips to Ethiopia while scouting for television commercial locations I found myself on the Lake Langano track. It is a very arid and semi-lunar landscape.

While traveling through the heat, haze, sand and gnarled trees I could see children running towards our four wheel drive as we made our way along this desolate track. This is where I met a child called Mele. As the car came to a stop and the children

Jon Burns is someone who I connected with via

Heidi Lemon of the Skatepark Association of the

USA (SPAUSA). Heidi seems to have a knack for finding

the most inspiring people in skateboarding. Jon is based

in Australia and once we began chatting, I realized his

work in Ethiopia was absolutely astounding. Thus far, his

organization Skateworks has impacted the lives of over

800 youth in Ethiopia. His dedication is truly inspiring.

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Interview by Michael Brooke

FROM THE PEDAL TO THE METALHow Skateworks is Transforming Ethiopia

Approximately 50,000 street children are sleeping in dangerous conditions despite the country as a whole doing well and growing at a fast rate with a solidifying middle class and comparatively strong financial base when referenced against other African countries.

When visiting and working in Ethiopia the prosperity was self evident and the Industrial growth is exponential. I asked

myself the obvious question – why are there so many street children around caught up in fighting, street crime, alcohol, theft, prostitution and in danger of abuse with no pathway up to a new life? There is no bridge back to education and the arms of parents and loved ones. No hope of a departure from this perilous life when Ethiopia is doing so well.

huddled around the passenger window, I realized that at this moment in time, the glass of the car window was as much a division from reality as the glass on our TV sets are at home back in the west.

Can you explain what you were feeling?As hard as we tried, when making charity appeal commercials with dramatic images and dialogue, it never seemed completely real. As I wound down the window, it was like winding down the screen of the television set. Standing before me were children barely dressed in much more than rags. They had little hand made cars for us to buy. The cars were crafted from scraps of wire, sticks and the like. I reached out and cupped my hand around the back of this little girls head and “bang!” It all became real in an instant. The lack of any kind of shoes and the exploding joy they exuded through their unquestioning sales pitch for their little hand made cars, really affected me profoundly.

So what happened next?With the help of our fixer for that trip, I chatted to little Mele for about her home, her family and her reality. It is through many trips to Ethiopia over that time and the next three years that I learnt Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. The country became my home. Over subsequent years I helped families, children in any way I could. In 2013 after much thought and experienced insight I founded Skateworks and have made it my life’s work ever since.

What are the key goals of Skateworks?To safely return as many street children to their homes out of harms way with a life time tool for prosperity and a life long motivator like skateboarding.

Your tag line is “the little wooden bridge from the street to the classroom.” Can you explain what this means?Skateworks uses skateboarding as the hook that connects children to education.

“The little wooden bridge” is the name of our up and coming feature film for this reason. I asked myself, “What is it about skateboarding and the way a skateboarder learns when married with trade education that creates stickiness? The bridge is tied up intrinsically with the learning process of a skateboarder. All through my years as a skateboarder there were three things I learnt.

1.  The connectivity that skaters all share. There is a bond that creates, stickiness or glueyness. Skateboarding breaks down barriers.

2.  The goal setting instinct that it imparts upon its disciples.

3.     That falling is a part of learning.

How does this tie into your vision?The skateboard b r i d g e s g a p s . T h e i n t e n t t o succeed and to go beyond is what skateboarding is all about. When tied to education it enhances the j o u r n e y a n d d i m i n i s h e s the fear of loss for attempting i s w h e r e t h e success lies and the digging deep that is required when serving in a third world level of unemployment, marginalization and hopelessness. S k a t e w o r k s primary creates a pathway from t h e s t re e t s t o stable life through skateboarding.

You work with street children – what is the situation like for them in Ethiopia?100,000 s t reet children live on t h e s t re e t s o f Ethiopia . Both boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 15 years of age sleep in drains and subterraneous temporary havens in the urban landscape. There are large numbers of children who were in government schools, whose families cannot grow enough food due to land being sold off to International investors. These children can no longer go to school due to this lack of food.

Dawit Legesse, the Skateworks trade and events manager, helping a young grom in Addis Ababa. The portable ramps are used in outreach projects.Photo: Wossene Haile

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For the past two years, Skateworks has been a central engagement in “A Day for Street Children” in Addis Ababa.Photo: Tom Noonan

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How were you able to get things rolling?I had been doing a lot of skateboarding around the city and found that every time I did this, a huge number of kids would flock around to see this new thing. It was obvious that this was the perfect tool to get kids to come so that we could interview them. So we built some portable ramps and took them with us to get the kids involved and with the buzz of skateboarding, find out why the children were travelling so far and putting themselves at so much risk. Wonderful things started to happen.

Connectivity, confidence, motivation, leadership and inner strength. The spirit of skateboarding was alive and well in Ethiopia! We started to interview the kids and find out why they were falling through the cracks. From the interviews we had with the children, we found out the answer. Children were coming into the central city by foot, some 200 hundred kilometers to earn money to feed their

families and of course themselves. The tool of trade chosen by the children was a shoeshine box.

A shoeshine box?The shoeshine box is cheap and portable. The problem is there are numerous kids who are shining shoes and they only get 10 cents per shine for their work. What we also learned was that whenever we brought a skateboard out children, youth and adults in the hundreds would come out of nowhere. This was when I had a light

bulb moment. If skateboarding was such a successful draw card, it would be a incredible waste not to do something with it.

I r e a l i z e d i f w e u s e d t h e connectivity of s k a t e b o a r d i n g that I had seen all my life, attach it to education in a short time frame learning curve then we can facilitate change.

So what did you do to replace the shoeshine box? T r a d i t i o n a l education takes so long. All the building materials that are normally w o o d i n a western home are p re dom i n a nt ly metal in Ethiopia in low-income h o m e s . D o o r frames, window frames, security doors for those windows, gates

and the security spikes on the fences to keep thieves out. Metal fabrication is without doubt the dominant trade in Ethiopia. The equipment is relatively small but expensive and repairs are needed when it breaks down.

Skateworks developed a solution. The Skateworks home made welder was developed through R&D with the Central

Australian College in Melbourne. It is a welder that is made from readily available components; emergency shut off safety switches and prefabricated commercial componentry. This allowed the youth from 13 years and above to be able to build their own welding unit in the first week. From here they learn how to repair it in the second week and therefore have a tool for life. There is no Walmart in rural Ethiopia and home repairs are crucial and compared to what a homemade equipment was currently being used. The welder is not only light years ahead, it was light and replaced the shoe shine box with a tool that could really create an income sufficient to allow the youth to return home and in only six weeks whereas traditional education takes years.

You have kids go from being a skateboarder to welder in six weeks?Absolutely. In weeks three, four, five and six, welding, finishing and grinding core units are covered in unison with skateboarding skills workshops. At the end of the six weeks the student makes their own steel kicker which allows us to assess their skills and return them to their village with their kicker, skateboard and all their welding gear.

What happens next?An assessment is done of the home environment to make sure all is safe for the child to return. Moving forward as we get multiple students being returned home to the same village. We check what previous students have made and rather than a kicker, the next student makes a corner transition that bolts onto the previous child’s kicker. This way tiny metal skateparks pop up all over Ethiopia and the stock of Skateboardinghums through the villages connecting children with a stable future.

What does all this achieve? A six week course in metal fabrication does not make you an expert but it gets you off the streets and that our goal. It gives you a basic income for you and your family and the ability to do more training in Trade education and Traditional education. It creates a functional Ethiopian youth who has a skill and the tools to create an income stream for himself and his family as well as his a pride and a life and a future.

For more information, please visit skateworks-project.org.