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Danielle Batist is an experienced freelance journalist, founder of Journopreneur and co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Project. She lived and worked all around the globe and covered global and local stories of poverty, exclusion and injustice. Increasingly, she moved beyond ‘problem-reporting’ to include stories about the solutions she found. She witnessed the birth of the new nation of South Sudan and interviewed the Dalai Lama. She reported for Al Jazeera, BBC and the Guardian and regularly advises independent media organisations on innovation and sustainability. She loves bringing stories to the world and finding the appropriate platforms to do so. The transformation of traditional media fascinates rather than scares her. While both the medium and the message are changing, she believes the need for good storytelling remains.
Sporting Power: How Skateboards Change Lives From Palestine To Afghanistan
For more than a decade, I’ve been covering stories about the power of sports to transform people’s lives. I wrote about how, from downtown New York to remote corners of India, sport is being used to break social barriers and address issues from homelessness to addiction. Year on year, I travelled to report on the Homeless World Cup, a global tournament that sees footballers from over 52 countries compete. And I interviewed UN representatives who recognise how sport can be used as a relatively low-cost, high-impact tool in humanitarian, development and peace-building efforts.
No sport seems to be off limits in its potential to change lives. I was inspired when reading this article about a skateboarding charity in Palestine in a recent Big Issue magazine. It highlights the efforts of SkatePAL, a non-profit organisation that has kickstarted one of the fastest growing skateboarding communities in the world, using local and international volunteers to teach skate classes and build skate parks in Palestine.
It reminded me of the words of another skateboarding charity founder I interviewed a while ago, who said skateboarding’s popularity could be attributed to its focus on individual battles: “Skateboarding is sort of fighting with yourself. You overcome your fears to jump down ten stairs. With skateboarding, you’re up against yourself and what you think you can do.”
