<h3><span><span><span><strong><span><span>About Lina’s Girls Skate Week Essen&nbsp;</span></span></strong></span></span></span></h3>

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<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>The main goal of Lina’s project was to promote self-love and empowerment of young girls in Essen, Germany. After previous experiences in skateboarding, she is aware of the power skateboarding can have in people’s lives. In particular, she views skateboarding as a key to improve the self-confidence of young girls.&nbsp;</span></span></span></span></span></span></p>

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<p><span><span><span><span><em><span>“Even if you just learn small steps on the skateboard it already feels like you could conquer the world and I really want to pass that feeling on. If you understand that everyone needs to&nbsp;</span></em></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><em><span>put the same effort into skateboarding to accomplish things everybody is equal – it&nbsp;</span></em></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><em><span>does not matter where you come from or how you look”&nbsp;</span></em></span></span></span></span></p>
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<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>Lina’s project was planned for a summer week, when the weather is best in Germany. Besides skateboarding, the project included diverse creative activities like a Painting/Graffiti workshop, creating stickers or bracelets, personalizing griptapes, designing decks, screenprinting and movie nights. Skate lessons were given every day of the week accompanied by these other activities. When she was designing her project, Lina was interested to keep developing her program for the long term so she can keep providing a safe space for girls to learn how to skateboard in Essen.&nbsp;</span></span></span></span></span></span></p>

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<p><span><span><span><span><em><span>“Basically I did a whole week of different events. I set different skate sessions all over the rural area in Germany and in different cities also. I organized different workshops and a skate contest at the end, which did not happen until today due to Corona”.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></em></span></span></span></span></p>
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<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>Regarding the limitations due to the COVID restrictions, Lina stated she was lucky because her project was set before the hard lockdown happened. Even if she had to adapt her project to the new situation, she was able to carry out her project almost at 100%.&nbsp;</span></span></span></span></span></span></p>

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<p><span><span><span><span><em><span>“For the skate sessions there were a maximum number of 40 people I think, and for the graffiti workshop just 10 people, also for the screen-printing workshop there were also capacity for 10 people. So the girls had to sign up before on the website, then they got an email with all the information. That helped me to track the information about the participants. Everything worked out pretty well!”&nbsp; &nbsp;</span></em></span></span></span></span></p>

<p><span><span><span><span><em><span>“We had to wear masks and stuff like that but I got lucky because my events were before the hard lockdown. I also had one skate session in an indoor park, and another one was planned but the day before the indoor park just closed. But it was just one day; 5 days out of 6 went well so I was really lucky.”&nbsp;</span></em></span></span></span></span></p>
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