For more than 3 years now, Concrete Jungle Foundation has been one of our NGO partners.
Active since 2016, Concrete Jungle Foundation is an organization whose core activities are building skateparks and running youth development programs in neglected communities worldwide. It empowers disadvantaged individuals and communities globally through fostering and sustaining the positive values inherent in skateboarding. Concrete Jungle Foundation effectively addresses the lack of skate infrastructures and activities through the following sustainable and long-term practices:
- responding to local demand for skateboarding facilities within environments lacking sports infrastructures and communal/youth spaces
- building professionally designed, world-class concrete skateparks, free of charge for all communities
- leveraging pedagogical expertise and years of experience in order to provide targeted youth programs focused on life-skills through skateboarding
- building-up local capacity and transferring long-term running of the park projects to local partner organizations in order to ensure sustainability, as well as local ownership of every project.
Throughout the past years, Concrete Jungle Foundation has been a valuable partner that we supported on various development projects:
- in Angola (2018) - thanks to a successful collaboration with French artist Andre Saraiva - leading to a $15,000 donation in order to build the country’s first skatepark in Luanda.
- in Jamaica (2020), where we joined forces with artist and photographer Coco Capitán, as well as renowned fashion brand Kenzo, thanks to whom we could donate $51,000 which allowed the completion of a 1300 sqm Freedom Skatepark in Kingston and finance an entire year of their activity program for 350 kids.
- in Peru (2021), where the construction of two new skateparks in the northern countryside aims to be reaching 300+ more children each year.
Their operations have grown massively since their first project was completed 4 years ago. Today, Concrete Jungle Foundation manages more than a dozen local staff, annually reaching more than 600 kids, developing 3 new youth programs, and continuously reporting on impact, actions and outcomes.
A new formal partnership
In this time of organizational growth, we couldn’t be happier to announce that THE SKATEROOM and Concrete Jungle Foundation have entered into a new formal partnership, effective today. With continued financial support, this new partnership will support the scale-up journey that the organization is currently undergoing, but -more importantly- allow them to increase the quality and sustainability of the programs they provide within both their current and future project locations.
Today, we want to thank Concrete Jungle Foundation, not only for helping us fulfill our mission to support the social skate community, but also for empowering youth all around the world.
“Being able to count on THE SKATEROOM’s support is definitely something we are proud of. THE SKATEROOM has seen us growing and has supported us in every step of the way, the trust THE SKATEROOM has placed in our work is invaluable and continually inspires us to do better. Together we are stronger and we couldn’t thank you enough for your continuous support, trust, and guidance throughout the years.”
Clément Taquet, Co-founder & CEO of Concrete Jungle Foundation
“The reality for non-profit organizations is that they are bound and limited by funding restrictions and their budget allocation to specific projects. They exhaust their resources on finding funding, which prevents them from doing their job and solving society’s most pressing issues. We wanted to reply to that need for sustainable and unrestricted funding by allowing them to cover their general activities and costs, including salaries, overheads, and other miscellaneous costs enabling them to scale-up.”
Charles-Antoine Bodson, Founder & CEO of THE SKATEROOM.
