Ethiopian Girl Skaters, an all-girls skateboarding group, is bringing together young girls from different backgrounds in the East African country.
The group is creating a community that challenges the stereotype that girls should not be involved in extreme sports like skateboarding.
The project, founded by skateboarder Sosina Challa, invites many young girls to use their free time to learn a new sport that helps them improve their physical and mental health.
Usually seen dressed in jeans, sweatpants and abayas at the skatepark, dozens of members of Ethiopian Girls Skaters — many of them schoolgirls — practise the art of nailing a landing, finding their balance and building their confidence as they zip across a skatepark in Addis Ababa.
Some gingerly slide forward a few metres, holding a friend’s hand for support, while others zoom across ramps and concrete bumps at full speed.
Members of the group, some as young as six, are pushing back against gender stereotypes and having fun doing it.
In 2022, the founder of the group, Challa, 24, told AFP she set up the organisation to empower young women, who often struggle to take up extreme sports because of a commonly-held belief in Ethiopia that “girls should stay home and help their parents”.
Since she co-founded the group in December 2020, she and the other mentors in the organisation have taught more than hundreds of girls how to skate.
Hanna Bless, a 22-year-old stylist who started skateboarding two years ago, told AFP: “It’s not really common for a girl to start skating because people don’t support you.
“But somebody had to be the first, some group had to start and we were the first one and I feel honoured to be part of that,” she added.
Although Ethiopia is home to many skateboarding groups, they are largely dominated by male skaters.
With time, the women skateboarders have learned to cope not just with the inevitable bruises the sport brings but also the criticism from naysayers.
Iman Mahamud, 17, said after 18 months of lessons, she no longer cared about “what people say about me being a girl and doing such stuff”.
“It helped me defeat my fears…I just enjoy it. It makes me happy,” she said.
