Look at a particular group of skateboarding youths in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and you’d be apt to find among them a 24-year-old deaf filmmaker from Cambria who is at the forefront of plans to build a skatepark for the disenfranchised athletes.
And he doesn’t even skate.
By Monday, Feb. 29, Sean Stromsoe’s Indiegogo campaign had raised $12,015 toward a $25,500 goal, thanks in part to many donations of $10 or $25 from “the young and poor,” according to his mom, Lisa Stromsoe.
But that still leaves a lot of money to raise in a little more than a week. For details or to donate, go to https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/addis-skatepark#.
If the Stromsoe name is familiar, it may be because Sean’s father, Randy Stromsoe, is a metal artist of international acclaim (his work includes the rascally coffeepot character in “The Hateful 8” and 600 pewter bowls — or cibori — for Pope John Paul II’s large-scale Masses in Los Angeles in 1987). Mom Lisa Stromsoe is a former Hearst Castle employee, art gallery owner and fundraiser extraordinaire.
The filmmaking-fundraising acorn hasn’t fallen far from the familial tree.
Sean started making films at age 9. After what his mom calls a two-year, “intense, really cool film school experience” at the prestigious Idyllwild School of Film, Sean became an assistant to the program there. Soon thereafter, he was one of the filmmakers hired by physician Larry Thomas, founder of the Tropical Health Alliance Foundation in Ethiopia.
The experience of filming the work of fourth-year dental students in a hospital/dental clinic in Addis Ababa would change Sean’s life.
Sean then went to a remote area of the country to help battle a relentless parasitic foot disease that goes by the acronym PODO, and from there to a pop-up cataract eye-surgery camp run by one of a handful of eye surgeons in the country of millions.
For details, go to www.thaf.org, and see Stromsoe’s videos on VIMEO or his website,www.seanstrom.com.
On a flight into Addis Ababa three years ago, Sean caught the eye of a few local street skaters, and their antics caught the lens of his camera. As he wrote on his Facebook page, “In 2013, I met a handful of kids skateboarding in Addis and we started Ethiopia Skate. Since then every moment has been building up to this project.”
According to his mom, Sean has “singlehandedly schlepped over 100 boards through his luggage … all donated from American and Canadian companies. He’s relentlessly championed the cause of these kids and young adults.
“They have access to information and images through the Internet,” she wrote in an email interview, “but have no way of plugging into any kind of ‘cool’ activity or project because there is no infrastructure there ... no community centers, gathering places for kids.”
Sean launched the Ethiopian Skate Youth Federation, now officially recognized. However, there’s no financial backing from the government, and the young man volunteers his time.
The 6-foot-4-inch tall nonskater has the land for the park, permits and a host of anticipatory skaters. The nonprofit www.makelifeskatelife.org soon will send dozens of volunteers from all over the world to build the park, but Sean needs more funds, primarily for materials, including concrete.
Lots of concrete.
So much concrete that one donation category on the Indiegogo page is for an $800 truckload of concrete. Five are needed. Two have already been pledged.
Other donation categories range from $10 to a $12,000 custom obstacle for the course. Each donor gets a related gift or gifts.
As Sean wrote on the Indiegogo page, “As this is an all-or-nothing campaign, funds will only be distributed and the skatepark will only be built if we reach our goal of $25,500.”
For the latest project updates, follow @addispark on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Email to addisskatepark@gmail.com.
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