As many of you will know, our van is the heart of our project. It carries our staff, volunteers, equipment and our mobile skatepark; allowing us to bring skateboarding sessions to young people all over Athens and the surrounding area. Once we arrive at the basketball court, or refugee camp, or public park, we unpack everything and set up our skatepark for the day. We help the kids to pad up, run through a warm up with them and begin the session. Then we pack everything back into the van and it’s off to the next location!
The problem
Up until this point, we have been operating using our van we drove here from England. It has served us incredibly well – transporting donations across Europe, and carrying our heavy load to all of our sessions every week for two and a half years. Unfortunately, we are now faced with the loss of this marvellous van and need to fundraise in order to help us purchase a new one here in Greece. We’re currently borrowing a car from one of our team members and running a reduced schedule, without our skatepark, while we find a solution.
Why a Greek van?
Despite it being much cheaper to purchase a van in other European countries, we have ruled out these options due to the incurring yearly costs of driving the van back to its country of registration to renew the mechanical test and leaving Greece every 6 months to allow us to continue using a foreign vehicle here. Our yearly trips back to England with our previous van were costing us approximately £1,400.
Our strategy for the next three years focuses on becoming an entirely local-led and locally-driven organisation. We are currently registering a branch of Free Movement here in Greece and training our local team to take over operations here. It’s a long-term plan but something we have to be focusing on and starting to implement now. Having a Greek vehicle is a vital part of this.
Our solution
Over the past couple of months we have been researching into many different options, which have finally led us to decide on purchasing a used Greek vehicle. This is our best option weighing up funds, expenses, our strategic plan and our goal of becoming a locally-led organisation within the next few years. To circulate in the centre of Athens, diesel engine cars have to meet at least Euro 5 emissions standards (post 2010 cars). That means starting prices at €13,000 (and we would also be vulnerable to a change in law should the law change to Euro 6 in the future). Due to this, we have chosen to go for a petrol engine van, of which the appropriate models for what we require are the Opel Vivaro/Renault Trafic/Nissan Primastar (2005-08). These vans are different makes of the same model, they allow for either a 9-seat configuration for skate park trips with the kids, or a 6-seat configuration for our sessions; with enough cargo space to fit at least one quarter, two boxes with ramps, two kickers with ramps and all bags, helmets and boards.
Conclusion
To purchase which van to meet our requirements we are looking at prices between €6,000-10,000. This seems to us like the most sustainable and future-focused option to solve our current problem and return to running our full schedule with our mobile skatepark in 2020. Our last crowdfunding campaign for a new van raised roughly €4,200, so with another €4,000, we can get a really good vehicle here in Greece which will support our current programme and short-term goals as well as our future developmental action over the next 5 years at least.
As an organisation, transparency is one of our core values. It’s important to us that people who donate to our Winter fundraising campaign understand where the money given will go and why.
Should you have any questions or concerns you can email us at:
info@freemovementskateboarding.com
Thank you!
