Empowering East Timorese youth through skateboarding
Our Aim
Skateboarding is an incredible tool for connection, empowerment and growth. The focus of Timor Skate is to share this empowerment with the community in Dili, Timor-Leste, by building a skatepark.
Due to the open nature of skateparks, they encourage active and passive participation from all demographics. Our goal is to construct a safe outdoor space to play, explore, and create in the form of a 530m2 skatepark. The active space will be complemented with several refuge areas to encourage further usage by the wider community. We are aiming to build in October 2022.
We have established the legal charity ‘Timor Skate’ to commence the consultation, design, funding through to the ongoing activation of the facility. We will ensure that locals are involved in all stages in a collaborative capacity. The designed facility has been shaped through consultation with local users and the Ba Futuru staff whilst ensuring it integrates within the community space. This initial engagement sets the stage for the locals to be involved throughout the entire process, ensuring all are updated as the project progresses, input into the presented design and are available for help during construction!
The Park
Our team has already visited Dili to meet with local skateboarders to talk with them about what a good local park would look like. Wade has used this input to guide his design process. The park is going to be amazing!
Our Team
Nick Oats - President
Nick feels both lucky and humbled to have visited Dili every six months or so for the past few years. It’s hard to visit a country that has faced such recent, all-encompassing violence and trauma, that has a long list of needs and yet so many friendly, welcoming people, and not want to give something back of a personal nature.
Knowing firsthand the positive force that skateboarding can be, when Nick met up with local skaters building their own community with worn-out second-hand boards and a slowly decaying park built with more passion than experience, it was obvious what that personal contribution should be.
Despite nearly twenty-five years on a skateboard, Nick quickly realized he could offer precious little in imparting his hard earned yet underwhelming stuntwood “skills.” Looking instead to his fifteen or so years as a bureaucrat, he rallied a group of friends with the aim of rebuilding the Dili skatepark. What he lacks in skateboard wizardry he makes up for in the ability to circulate papers, chair meetings, and lodge documents in due accordance with statutory timelines. He also holds a masters degree in international and community development, providing an important lens for Timor Skate’s efforts.
Wade Trevean - Vice President
Over the past 13 years Wade has worked with several Australian based skate park design/construction companies with roles leading from Senior Designer to Principal, delivering over 120 skate parks both in Australia and overseas. Academically he has an Advanced Diploma of Civil Engineering at the Victoria University of Technology in Melbourne and a Master’s in Construction Management at the Swinburne University of Technology.
Wade's first charity project was for a small skate space in Kathmandu, Nepal and has since volunteered on projects in Morocco, Palestine and Iraq with skatepark designs, construction and the collaboratively onsite management. Wade advocates for accessible and sustainable youth spaces that encourage community wide inclusion from initial design consultations, build assistance to the activation of their space, ensuring spaces that caters for both passive and active use for all user types and associated skill levels. In addition, he ensures that completed projects are constructed as per international standards to deliver well-built long lasting and safe facilities.