Vans is Helping to Build the Confidence of Young Indian Girls by Teaching Them to Skateboard

Give a girl a skateboard, she rides for a day. Teach a girl to skateboard and she builds self-confidence for life.

That’s the idea behind a great new project from Vans called “Girls Skate India’ to celebrate International Women’s Day. The skateboard brand sent pro skater and Tony Hawk protogé Lizzie Armanto to India to show the girls a thing or two in their local skate park.

The thing is, the girls could already skate – they just needed a bit of inspiration.

Check out this inspiring five-minute video:

One of their own

One of the reasons the girls were already able to skate was because they had one of their own to look up to. Atita Verghese found skateboarding at 19-years-old in her hometown of Bangalore, India, and has since made it her mission to show more girls the benefits of skateboarding.

Verghese was at the clinic with Vans and said Armanto’s visit will help empower young girls:

Once these girls see what’s possible, they’re going to have new aspirations and dreams that [Lizzie Armanto] is going to ignite in them.

Teaching girls around the world

Vans’ campaign won’t end here. It plans to offer female skate clinics in 100 cities around the world, including Shanghai, São Paulo, London, Brooklyn and Mexico City.

Armanto says learning to skateboard isn’t just a neat thing to do to pass the time. It has far bigger goals attached to it:

You learn self-confidence through skating. The more girls get into that, the world will change.