ToDo is, together with the Youth Council of Best and the “Raad van Skate”, trying to arrange the financing for the construction of a large SkatePark in their area. The municipality Best has paid for 3 Rhino-units but also indicated they have no budget to finance the entire park. Since that will cost around 200K euro.
Which means ToDo has to get the money from elsewhere. “Just donations and sponsorships won’t do” says Thijs Schaffers. “We are considering crowdfunding and European fundings, but you need a lot of expertise to sort these things out, and … you also need to get as much credits in as possible. That is why we organize a lot of things in order to put our plans and skating in general on the map. One of those things, for instance, is this skate event we had yesterday; the next one is already planned on September 2nd.”
First you needed to wander through the whole village of Best when you wanted to skate. But that didn’t work out all that well.
“Skaters want to be able to make a good run and that’s just impossible when the skate equipment is spread throughout the whole of Best” says Thijs “And it also caused nuisance, because the equipment was too close to the houses. At ToDo we thought: maybe we can install all this equipment on our premisses. We are not close to regular houses, there is guidance available and First Aid can be provided if necessary. So we went to the municipality, talked to the youngsters and the people in the neighbourhoods to see how they felt about it. And in fact, everyone considered it to be a good plan. ”
Thijs continues: “Youngsters skate here every day. And these skate events generate even more publicity. That is exactly what we want to achieve. So we make it as easy as possible to join in. Free entrance, you can use the ramps just for fun and if you want to join the contest, it’s cheap. And there are some nice prices to win.”
The youngsters themselves also contribute to the realization of the skatepark. “Only issue is you run into the fact that that group is constantly changing. When they are about 15 years old, they walk in here, but at the age of nineteen they will leave and go and do other things. So that’s why it’s important that new youngsters then walk in to fill that gap.”
A few young players from Eindhoven also participated in the skate event. they are a fan of ToDo (and Thijs!) and are dedicated skaters always busy learning new stunts. And yes, there are some injuries, but who cares! “Oh well, it’s all in the game!”