Our Mission

We make skateboarding accessible by building skateparks and developing skate programs that positively impact the lives of underserved youth worldwide.

Our Vision

As skateboarders ourselves, we know that skateboarding has the potential to foster physical and mental health as well as provide a way to build community.

Our Impact

Since 2013, our skatepark projects have positively impacted the lives of young people around the world.

We support local organizations to independently manage the skateparks and programs with their own means of creative development. Our projects have resulted in new skateparks, skate shops, skate schools, and local jobs.

Today at the projects, each week, 5000 young people, including girls, refugees and other underserved youth from different backgrounds, have access to skateboarding.

Arne Hillerns, Founder & Executive Director

Arne has a Master of Arts in Social Science from the University of Hanover in Germany. His passion for skateboarding and the lack of skateboard spaces in his student city Hanover led him to co-create community youth and skate spaces.

As a passionate skateboarder with 25 years on the board, he is convinced through his personal experience of the positive impact skateboarding has on communities.

Samantha Robison, Creative Director

Samantha holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Masters in Fine Art from University of California Santa Cruz.

In 2010 Samantha founded AptArt, her own non-profit organization where she develops, organizes, and manages community mural projects. After contributing to almost every MLSL project, Samantha officially joined MLSL in 2016 and has since been involved in most operations of MLSL, organizes research trips, coordinates builds, and has been vital for project development and creative direction.

Shane Carrick, Director of Skateboard Operations

Shane is currently finishing his masters degree in Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Denver.

Shane is a skateboarder, snowboarder, yogi and coach. He joined MLSL in 2018 to develop female-specific and refugee programming, manage the programs on the ground, train skate coaches, host workshops, facilitate in-kind donations, lead skate classes and develop key partnerships with organizations to help make skateboarding accessible to all. 

Kjell Van Hansewyck, Project Manager

Kjell joined the MLSL team in 2022. He has a Masters degree in Psychology at the KU Leuven, Belgium and has been skating for over 16 years. Since 2017 he has been involved in building over 40 skateparks across Europe and participated in various international builds.

His role with MLSL is to supervise the construction of skateparks and other build related projects. Kjell is passionate about traveling, exploring cultures and learning new languages, such as Arabic. 

While traveling through India with their skateboards in 2012, MLSL founder Arne Hillerns and friends met a group of Indian skaters who wanted to build a skatepark but didn’t know how. The idea developed to build a skatepark with the help of professional skatepark builders.

With sponsorship from Levi’s Skateboarding, we built India’s first public skatepark in 2013. Throughout the process, the locals got hands-on experience and have since built more than a dozen more skateparks across India.

In 2014, we organized a follow-up project and built a skatepark together with the skate community in La Paz, Bolivia. Later that year, our first online fundraiser for building a skatepark in Jordan marked a turning point for MLSL. Jon Chaconas and Samantha Robison joined the team.

In the following years, thanks to the gracious support from many donors around the world, we successfully crowdfunded for building community skateparks in Myanmar, Ethiopia and Nepal.

In 2018, after a project in Morocco, we crowdfunded the construction of Iraq's first skatepark. Jon Chaconas left the team and Shane Carrick joined.