Published in Huckmagazine, Nov. 2011

How skateboarding is helping to revitalise a village in ruralIndiaby Alex King

First published in Huckmagazine, December 11, 2015http://www.huckmagazine.com/ride/skate/pictures-skateboarding-helping-save-village-rural-india/

Text by Alex King Photography Vicky Roy

How skateboarding is helping to revitalise a village in rural IndiaSkating, educating and building communityAn interview with Ulrike Reinhard

Author, futurist and community activist Ulrike Reinhardfounded Janwaar Castle to reinvigorate a rural villagethrough skateboarding.

Can a skatepark help transform a community? At JanwaarCastle, Ulrike Reinhard set herself the ambitious task ofrevitalising a village in rural India through skateboarding and it seems to be working.

Janwaar is a small village in northern Madhya Pradesh,one of the biggest and poorest states in India. Ulrike founded the Janwaar Castle project in part to stem braindrain to the cities, which affects much of rural India.

The lack of educational and career opportunities meanmany young people leave home for the city but rarelyfind a better quality of life in the overcrowded urban cen-tres. And the villages they leave behind are slowly dying.

As projects like Skateistan have demonstrated, skate-boarding can be a powerful tool to strengthen communi-ties and improve young peoples lives, education andaspirations. The centrepiece of Janwaar Castle is a 450 sqm skatepark the first in rural India and the largestin the country.

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5Angosh, Deepun and Mohat three of our youngest skateboarders.

But its about much more than a skatepark. Its about uplifting the entirecommunity through a project that brings villagers of all ages together and gives young people a reason to stay and build up Janwaar for futuregenerations.

A publisher, author and futurist, Ulrike has a strong track record of community activism, building networks online and offline. In the mid-80sshe was active in The Whole Earth Lectronic Link (usually shortened toThe Well), which is one of the oldest virtual communities. More recentlyshe founded DNAdigital, an initiative in Germany aimed to catalyse dialogue between business leaders and the Internet Generation.

We reached out to Ulrike to find out more about Janwaar Castle, buildingcommunity and the disruptive potential of the internet.

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7Huckmagazine: How did Janwaar Castle come about and why did you choose to put skateboarding at the heart of the project?

Ulrike Reinhard: Skateboarding as a tool for youth empowerment hasworked extremely well in in Kabul, Afghanistan at Skateistan. So whyshouldnt it work in rural India? Unlike cricket or hockey, skateboarding isnew for the kids, so theyre very curious and eager to learn. Its attractiveto look at, somehow cool, and really requires both body and mind todo it right. So there wasnt much danger of a skatepark in a small villagein the middle of nowhere in rural India not being attractive. The kids weredrawn to the project whilst the skatepark was still under construction,even though the outcome was still uncertain and none of the villagersknew what a skateboard was.

We opened Janwaar Castle in April 2015 and what has happened sincethen is simply incredible. The children really embraced the park, theytook over ownership and responsibility, and it very quickly became theirplace to be. With only two basic rules No school no skateboarding!and Girls first!, the project grew self-organised within a givenframeset. The kids dont have to ask for any permission its open foreveryone. And it worked. The positive energy from the kids is now firingthe entire village. As Mehmood Khan, the former global head of innova-tion at Unilever, and a person with whom I work closely, said: Ive neverseen a village changing so fast.

School attendance has gone up, the kids are much more committed andmuch more self-confident and they smile. Weve certainly broughtsomething precious into their lives. Where this will lead exactly, I dont

8Ankat on her way to the skatepark.

9know. We now include the villagers in our work, especially the farmers, to move on to the next step and lift up the village as a whole. The kidsare the driving force. And the skatepark is the major attractor.

What are the biggest lessons youve learned from your experiences in DIY community building?

Im not sure what you mean by DIY community building communitiescan only be build by DIY, you cant force them, can you? If there isnt acommon cause or a common set of values it will never work. And bothcause and values cant be defined, because its a process of interactionand reflection among community members. Its about doing things together, collaboration and co-creation and learning together. Only then can we all learn which things resonate. It has a lot to do with trans-parency and empathy and not so much with telling others what to do.Its a nonlinear network model, not a hierarchy with command and con-trol lines. Unfortunately the latter is still a frequent and strong componentin development aid. So if you ask me what Ive learnt, Id say its the artof letting go.

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Ajay he is certainly one of our best skateboarders.

Who or what have been your biggest inspirations behind yourfocus on building community both online and offline?

Im not so much focused on community building at least thats the wayI see my work. Id say I was always much more interested in how todrive change. If community is an outcome of this process, fine. If not,thats fine as well. And in driving change the internet plays a very disrup-tive and significant role.

Since my early days with The Well, the digital precursor of the WholeEarth Catalogue, and its founders in Sausalito in the mid eighties Ive feltthat the internet has this power to turn markets upside down. Weveseen this in the music and publishing industries, in retail business and inmedia. Weve seen tremendous change in countries we thought wereimmune to change and the internet played a major role there.

I think the moment you understand that the internet causes major disruption and at the same time is the source for any solution is themoment when great things are possible. We have to learn that the solution has to be as complex and dynamic as the problem (AshbysLaw) because only then will things work. And the internet has the poten-tial for both. And when I look back at people like Howard Rheingold, Stewart Brand, John Perry Barlow to name but a few of that early on-line generation or in terms of complexity theory Brian W. Arthur and Stu Kauffman from the Santa Fe Institute, and Peter Kruse in Germany yes, I have to say those are the ones whove inspired me most.

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Do you feel the internet has lived up to its noblefounding intentions and democratising potential?

My answer here is a clear and sad NO! I very often thinkabout why this should be. On an optimistic day Id say:the collective (intelligence) of a network will always trumphierarchy. It has democracy built into the system we just have to play it right and have the guts not only to talk about transparency, participation and collaborationbut to enact them.

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Mohan (left) and Brijendra built a 3D-model of the skatepark.

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Village life in Janwaar.

Way too often the internet is seen as justanother channel and not as what it truly is: a completely new infrastructure. Yet on a negative day when I look at all the hypocrisy in the world of politics and finance, where weve created a modelwhich generates ever more money withoutcreating more value/wealth then I havemy doubts that the network one day will trump money and power. Were in the middle of a tough battle and Im un-certain where were heading. Even so, I still remain optimistic.

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