On a sleepy morning in Ixelles, a chic suburb of Brussels, the empty, pristine streets are almost silent – save for the approaching sound of wheels gripping pavement. One solitary figure rolls into view, cruising down the centre of the road. He skids to a halt at 21 Rue du Mail, kicks up his skateboard into his hand, and steps between two slate-grey doors.

Inside, a stockroom is stacked floor-to-ceiling with polished skateboards, crafted from maple trees in Canada before being imported to the Brussels HQ. At first, you’re met with a wall of bright-beige wood – but start flipping the boards over and a kaleidoscope of colourful prints on their underside brightens the workshop. There are Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans printed in eight bold hues, and his Marilyn Diptych on a shimmering gold backdrop. Piled on the next shelf is a series of politically-charged decks designed by LA-based illustrator Shepard Fairey, whose iconic HOPE campaign poster for Barack Obama made visual history. And then there’s the pink-and-gold Kate Board – British artist Grayson Perry’s gilded depiction of the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton.

This is The Skateroom – a social entrepreneurship founded by Belgian businessman and gallerist Charles- Antoine Bodson. Each of the thousands of boards in this room will be sold as limited-edition art pieces, with a portion of each sale donated to skateboarding-focused NGOs. Bodson sold his gift voucher experience business six years ago in order to pursue a passion project in the arts, curating a private collection of skateboard decks painted by contemporary artists. It was around this time that he met Oliver Percovich – founder of Skateistan, anNGO with a focus on supporting children in the developing world through creative learning and skateboarding. The organisation has set up arts-based schools with attached skate parks in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa, providing access to education to over 2,800 children in total, 51% of which are girls – no mean feat in societies where learning is less accessible to them.

“I was convinced by their mission, but struck by their difficulty in raising the funds they needed,” Bodson recalls on meeting Percovich. “I decided to dedicate my collection to Skateistan.” A strong friendship and working partnership sprung from there; today Skateistan is The Skateroom’s primary funds beneficiary. By collaborating with artists – who are usually approached cold by The Skateroom, but who all have an interest in social impact – to create limited-edition boards starting at around €170 (signed editions can auction for up to €43,000), The Skateroom has constructed an economic model whereby at least 10% of its turnover goes towards Skateistan’s development projects.

It’s an approach that’s bagged collaborations with some of the biggest names in contemporary art – but it wasn’t easy to get off the ground. “The first artists we collaborated with were hard to convince,” Bodson remembers. “I had nothing to show them from previous collaborations. I just had to get them to trust me and to believe in Skateistan’s mission.” The first to collaborate was Belgian graffiti star ROA, but it was another project with a controversial artist that led to The Skateroom’s big break. “When we launched our project with Ai Weiwei, everything sold out within a couple of hours,” Bodson grins. But the political slogan-printed decks designed by the activist-artist were far from simple to produce.

“It took six months to get in touch with Ai Weiwei – he was still stuck in China under house arrest. But it was great to work with him once we made contact. He got back in touch when Donald Trump was elected, saying, ‘let’s do it again – with this visual.’” The image? Weiwei’s middle finger directed at the White House. Released on Trump’s 100th day in office, it sold out within two hours.

With such an artist to its name, The Skateroom now has its pick of creatives and has worked with some of the biggest institutions in the world, launching a Jean-Michel Basquiat collection with MOMA New York, and selling decks at the Tate and Serpentine in London. The latest collection, released in June this year, showcases the work of young illustrators Jean Jullien, Jeremyville and Steven Harrington – all keen to get involved in the social project. “It’s very important that this kind of project exists as a way to bring people closer via culture,” Jullien says.

With his background in business and fine art collecting, where did Bodson’s passion for skateboards come from?

“As a kid, I liked to skate,” he says. “And the do-it-yourself nature of skating and art… there are things about those worlds that look alike. You can skate everywhere in the world. It’s a kind of freedom and it connects you with people.” It’s an ethos shared by Percovich, who, having skated from the age of six, naturally brought his board with him when he moved from his native Melbourne to Kabul, Afghanistan, when his girlfriend got a job there over a decade ago.

“I didn’t have a job and I wasn’t tied to an organisation,” he tells us. “I’d skate around and within 20 seconds there’d be a group of kids around me interested in the board. It struck me that although half the population of Afghanistan is under 15, I didn’t see many initiatives engaging children. All those billions of dollars spent on international development, and very little of it was going towards children, especially girls’ education.”

He began to engage with the kids, teaching them to skateboard on the streets with two other volunteers. Before long, about 70 children were joining the sessions, and the effect was something very special. “What I saw was a microcosm of what I wished for the country overall,” he says. “Children coming together from different ethnicities that were otherwise very divided. Kids from middle class backgrounds next to kids who had been shining shoes on the streets their whole lives. It was a little community with a lot of potential.”

As the sessions grew in size, Percovich started paying one of the Afghan girls he’d met to teach her own group of skaters. The wage she earned paid her school fees – and it planted a seed. “I thought of building a school, with a skate park as well as classrooms where we can run classes based on creative learning and critical thinking – the types of skills they’d need to solve the very difficult problems they were going to inherit, to prepare them to be leaders in Afghanistan,” Percovich explains.

After gathering funds from international donors, Skateistan was born in July 2009. Three months later the NGO opened its very first Skate School in Kabul with space for 400 students. “It was definitely the most exciting day of my life so far,” laughs Percovich. Since then, four more schools have opened their doors, supporting the education already available to children with creative learning and a back-to-school ethos in places where access to education is low, or dropout levels are high. These include Johannesburg, the latest project to open in 2015, supported by a Skateroom collaboration with American artist Paul McCarthy.

The two organisations are now working together on their biggest project: opening a Skate School in 2020 in the Zaatari Refugee Camp, on the Syrian border in Jordan – home to some 80,000 displaced people. “A third of the Jordanian population are now refugees,” reveals Percovich. “We want to create opportunities not only for refugees but also Jordanians. We plan to welcome up to 1,200 children there weekly, creating opportunities for refugee children, healing rifts and investing in Jordanians too.”

For Bodson, this is just the beginning. “I would love to see 100 new skate and school installations around the world in 10 years,” he beams. “Skating will be an Olympic sport in 2020, so we have to spread the sport around the world so the US, Brazil or Japan don’t win all the medals!”

Supporting Skateistan also provides a way to address Western attitudes towards retail on a larger scale. “I’m convinced that with socially engaged products, we can change the world,” says Bodson. theskateroom.org

On a normal midweek morning at dawn, Bureh Beach would look more or less as it has since time immemorial. The ochre-yellow sand would be totally deserted, save a couple of sand-speckled, mongrel puppies playfighting in the lagoon. The intensifying sun would project shimmering highlights on the deep metallic-blue ocean, from the steep waves clawing at the shore to the horizon. The calm would stretch from the surf to the surrounding thick mangrove forest, which leads down to the Banana Islands, shrouded in the humidity trapped there by the trees.

But today, a hazy early-December morning, a flurry of activity is taking place. Around 30 young men – and one woman – are performing warm-up stretches in board shorts on the pillowy sand, fixing determined eyes on the ferociously building waves. Sierra Leone’s first national surf championship is taking place – two years after it became the 98th member nation of the International Surf Association (ISA) – and each competitor is preparing to battle it out to qualify as the country’s official surf representative. With enough training, the winners could ride that wave all the way to the 2020 Olympic Games, where surfing will feature for the first time.

An hour and a half south of Freetown and next to the 300 people-strong Bureh Town, Bureh Beach is home to Sierra Leone’s first and only surf club. Made up of a bright blue-painted club house and five modest huts providing basic accommodation, the small complex was hand-built by a group of 15 local young men, with materials gathered from the surrounding bush. Equipped with a collection of 15 battered, second-hand shortboards – the only boards in the country – the group today offers Sierra Leone’s only surf lessons (five of them having recently completed the official ISA level 1 surf instructor course). As well as bringing surfing to a country unfamiliar with the sport, the group is creating a 100%-sustainable, eco-tourism offering for visiting travellers – and with that, attracting a new kind of attention to a country that’s been dealt unfavourable international coverage for far too long.

It all started 14 years ago, when a 10-year-old boy called John Small, from Bureh Town, met an American expat called Dave. “He used to come here every weekend to surf,” the now-24-year-old Small tells me, sitting on the sand beneath the shade of a palm leaf-woven parasol. Mid-competition, he’s just jumped out of the water and his short, half-bleached dreadlocks flick seawater over his salt-dusted shoulders. “Every weekend I’d borrow his board and paddle-paddle, struggle-struggle until I started to get my balance. One day I stood up and caught a wave.”

After a year, Dave left – and gave Small his surfboard as a parting gift. The 11-year-old continued to teach himself to surf, passing on his new-found knowledge to his local group of friends, who turned out to be just as resourceful as he was. “I started surfing when I was seven,” says 22-year-old Charles Samba. “Back then it was hard. There was only one surfboard – in the whole country! We were learning to surf on bodyboards as kids. But more visitors started to surf at Bureh Beach, and we’d make friends with them and they’d leave their boards behind.”

One day in 2010, Irish NGO-worker and amateur surfer Shane O’Connor arrived in Bureh, on a weekend trip from his base in Freetown. He saw potential in the young group of surfers and launched a fundraising campaign to provide money for equipment and the building of the club house. It attracted the attention of German international aid organisation Welthungerhilfe (WHH), who donated funds and recruited Austrian Stefan Pfeiller to manage the newly built club. Pfeiller had managed surf clubs in France and Morocco, and has travelled between Bureh and his home at every opportunity over the past four years to support the club, developing a sustainable management structure and business model, and linking it up to the ISA.

“For guys like this in Sierra Leone, it’s somewhere between hard and impossible to find a proper job,” Pfeiller explains in between surf sets. He’s here to judge today’s championships, appraising each surfer’s tight turn and cutback from his vantage point on a smooth, large rock, noting down scores in pencil and cheering each competitor on with equal enthusiasm.

“There’s not much work in tourism,” he says. “There’s fishing, but big sea trawlers are taking coastal fishing jobs away. The only other option is to move to Freetown to do terrible work, for terrible pay – selling stuff on the street or mining.”

For Pfeiller, this is what makes Bureh Beach Surf Club so special. It’s creating meaningful, sustainable work for young people otherwise lacking in opportunities. “To get to live the life of a surfer, to be free and spend every day in the water? It’s everything to them,” he smiles broadly. “The club is their life – they even take it in turns sleeping here. It runs totally independently and sustainably. They’re so proud of it and it’s amazing to see how professional and passionate they are.”

But it’s not been an easy journey for the club or the boys that have made it their life. When the Ebola virus hit Sierra Leone in 2014, it thankfully didn’t reach Bureh – thanks to the diligence of the community – but it had a severe impact on the surf club’s development. “There were times when no one would come to Bureh for months, and when the quarantine zone was up, it wasn’t even possible to leave to get food,” Pfeiller recalls. “But everybody from the project kept it up.”

For one particular surfer, Kadiatu Kamara, there’s been another, unique set of challenges. ‘KK’ is the club’s first and only female member, and to date, the only woman in Sierra Leone to have ever surfed a wave. “When I started surfing, it wasn’t easy. I was scared of the waves, scared of the board, scared of sharks,” she reveals. “I didn’t know how to swim. The boys made fun of me when I fell in the water, and sometimes they’d even take my board away so I’d have to learn to swim. They taught me everything, though.” It was thanks to the surfer boys that KK stuck it out, when a bad experience in the water almost ended her surfing career before it even began.

“One of the first times I ever went in the water, my leash got loose from my foot and I lost my board,” she remembers solemnly. “I couldn’t swim. Some of the boys saw me and pulled me out of the water. I’d swallowed plenty of water, they had to get it out of my lungs.” Scared of what would happen to her family without her there to support them, Kamara vowed to quit surfing for good.

But for a month, Small, Samba and their friends would visit and urge her to rejoin, keen to encourage other girls in the town to surf and with promises that one day she’d make a living from the sport and club. They successfully persuaded her – and she’s now Sierra Leone’s only, women’s national surf competitor.

KK is a force to be reckoned with. Having faced derision from the local community – “it’s hard to encourage girls to surf. Their mums are scared of the water and don’t let them go near it. Because of that, they make fun of me and say I am wasting my time” – she displays a level of determination and dexterity that runs even deeper than that of her male counterparts. For Kamara, surfing means escapism – both from daily concerns, and in terms of her future plans to surf in international competitions. “When I go in the water, I’m so happy,” she says. “I learn things. I feel different in my life – sometimes like I’m surfing in a different country. I wish that I will do that one day.”

If Pfeiller has anything to do with it, she will – along with Samba, who, by the end of the day, has won first prize in the ISA men’s championship. “Our biggest dream is to one day attend the Olympic Games,” Pfeiller enthuses. “I feel like we’re going to get there because the surfing level here is really, really high, especially when you think that all the boards here are more or less broken and these guys have never had a proper surf lesson. We’ve got seven-year-old kids doing turns on bodyboards, which is so amazing.”

For the surfers of Bureh Beach who are pursuing their own careers, it means far more than personal gain. As it grows – funded increasingly by travellers visiting for surf lessons and a rustic stay on the beach, rather than donations – the club is investing in scholarships for local children, helping to pay their school fees while providing surf lessons followed by hot meals. For KK, any success she enjoys will encourage girls to join her in the water. As for Small, his dream is to change the external perceptions people have of Sierra Leone and present it as a professional surfing destination.

“My ambition is to put Sierra Leone on the map, so people will know that surfing is happening here,” he says, proudly overlooking his fellow surfers who are sitting cross-legged on the sand and cracking open a post-contest lager. “We just want people to know what it’s really like here and to have the confidence to come.” sierraleonesurfing.com

Willie Tucker is fluent in chimp speak. From the high concrete look-out platform, separated from an eight-acre enclosure by a tall mesh fence, he howls and hoots into the leafy rainforest that stretches out before us, blending into hazy green-blue mountains as it hits the horizon. For a few moments, the only sound disturbing the secluded landscape is the siren of cicadas – as loud as a car alarm, and a constant companion in the Sierra Leone bush. Then, a slight but unmistakable rustle in a distant treetop signals a response. One by one, a group of 15 chimpanzees emerges from the undergrowth, swinging languidly between branches and shimmying down tree trunks until they’re crouched on the red-brown earth just metres in front of us. “Tito,” Tucker calls out to the pack’s 30-year-old alpha male, whose fuzzy hair ruffles out from his back like a brush. “How are you today?”

It’s dusk at Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, in the Western Area Peninsula National Park just outside of Freetown, and the 76 chimps that call it home are hungry. On one of two daily tours of the sanctuary, I watch as handlers toss the primates their dinner – cricket ball-sized globes of local bulgur wheat, grains and beans – before coaxing them into their dens for the night. Visitors that make the hour’s drive from the congested capital city to the 100-acre refuge – which culminates in a bumpy 4×4 ride up a steep dirt track pitted with potholes – come to take a peek at Africa’s most endangered species, and a breather from the capital’s frenetic energy. For not only is Tacugama Sierra Leone’s leading wildlife conservation centre, it’s also its primary eco-tourism offering: beyond the sanctuary gates are six eco-lodges half-hidden in dense, vibrant-green jungle.

The isolated setting, strung with hammocks and abuzz with tropical birds and butterflies, feels like paradise – which should come as no surprise. The Tacugama site is a precious pocket of preserved land in a country caught up in a spiral of poorly controlled deforestation, mineral exploitation and slash-and-burn agriculture. At the beginning of the 20th century, 70% of the country was covered in thick forest. Today, Sierra Leone’s total forest coverage is a meagre 4%. Not only does this present grave risks to its population – last August’s devastating landslide in Regent, just 2km from Tacugama, was fundamentally caused by over-deforestation in the surrounding hills – it also contributes to the mass habitat loss of wild apes. Add to that the illegal trading of chimpanzees as novelty pets and the ongoing scourge of hunting them for bushmeat, and it’s no wonder that the native chimp population currently stands at just 5,500.

“Chimps are no longer safe in the wild,” says Tacugama’s founder Bala Amarasekaran. “We set up this sanctuary to rescue orphaned and endangered chimpanzees, but we’re increasingly focusing on the root of the problem: that Sierra Leone has very few patches of suitable habitat for chimps left.”

Tacugama’s work has expanded into a countrywide conservation project – but it all began with a chimpanzee named Bruno. Twenty-four years ago, a newly married Amarasekaran and his wife were travelling in the rural ‘upcountry’ when they came across a severely malnourished baby chimp tied to a tree. Unable to walk away, they bought him for $20 (€17). “We nursed him back to health and he became a child to us,” smiles Amarasekaran. The experience alerted him to the cruel, widespread practise of keeping baby chimps as pets until they become strong enough to challenge their owners (adult chimpanzees are five times stronger than the average man) – often leading to them being abandoned, or killed. Amarasekaran gave up his career in accountancy and set up the sanctuary in 1995, with a government mandate, EU funding and Bruno as its first resident.

Today, Tacugama’s primary mission is to confiscate chimps from those illegally keeping them (mostly expats, according to Amarasekaran), and rehabilitate the apes before re-releasing them into the wild. However, the primates arrive at the sanctuary in varying physical and psychological states. “Some don’t even know how to climb a tree,” says sanctuary supervisor Tucker, who’s been Amarasekaran’s right-hand man since day one. Once they’ve completed a 90-day quarantine period and a series of medical check-ups, the chimps are gradually taught how to climb, build nests, and socialise, being slowly introduced to groups of other chimpanzees.

In the wild, chimpanzees live to an average age of 50 in groups of around 50, and the sanctuary aims to replicate their natural life cycle as closely as possible. The youngest chimps spend their days in a modest-sized enclosure, cheekily leaping between poles and ropes, ambushing each other and hurling toys towards unsuspecting passers-by.

Over the course of their lives, they’ll gradually progress to the final-stage enclosure – where Tito’s group lives – which is big enough for them to explore, build nests and forage for food. Though there’s an ongoing low-level search for a suitable site for the chimps’ eventual release, the continual loss of habitat in Sierra Leone makes it unlikely that these chimps will ever be able to live in the wild here again.

“We think of these 76 chimps as ambassadors for those in the wild,” says Amarasekaran. “About 1,000 local kids come to our sanctuary every year to learn about chimps. When people actually see them, they begin to understand and respect them more.” That’s where the rest of the sanctuary’s work begins: with community outreach programmes that engage the public through education and sensitisation activities.

Having met the chimps (from a safe distance, as human contact with the sometimes-aggressive primates is strictly forbidden) and dined on homemade, creamy groundnut stew, I head to my lodge for the night, which offers a comfortable but no-frills jungle-living experience. As is standard in much of Sierra Leone’s accommodation, Wi-Fi is non-existent, electricity is only generated for a few hours each day and the water comes out of the taps stone cold. As the orange sunset sinks into inky darkness and the cicadas’ calls reach near-deafening decibels, I tuck a mosquito net around my bed and settle in for a night’s sleep punctuated by the scratches and rustles of nearby bushbabies and the distant screeching of chimpanzees.

It’s sunrise the next morning and ex-army sanctuary patroller Emmanuel Williams is tucking a machete into the polished leather belt of his immaculately pressed, navy trousers. “We engage in intensive patrolling to prevent deforestation and poaching,” he states, wielding the blade to clear a path as we enter the thick bush, on one of six guided hiking trails offered by the sanctuary. “We stop poachers, sensitise them and explain the disadvantages of killing wildlife. If they persist, we have the mandate to take them to the police station.”

A former radio communications corporal, Williams applies military precision to every aspect of safeguarding Tacugama and its surrounding territory, as well as his approach to leading guests on bush walks. Though cobras, crocodiles and all manner of poisonous spiders live in the rainforest, on most treks guests only encounter a vibrant kaleidoscope of butterflies and tropical birds, and ant trails so thick they look like vibrating black tree roots.

I pick my way through the undergrowth, following Williams closely as he beats back the long spiky grass blades snatching at my clothing, and inspects the forest carpet of sand, leaves and twigs for evidence of wild animals, invisible to the untrained eye. Mid-scramble up a chalky, rocky slope – sweat prickling as the day’s hot humidity begins to set in – he halts and picks up a round, green fruit casing, cracked open like a conker to reveal a silky white interior. “Bush berries,” he murmurs. “A vervet monkey ate this. It’s fresh – they’re nearby.”

Over the course of the three-hour hike, we pass termite hills towering two metres above the ground, a waterfall plunging fresh water towards Freetown, and the Congo Dam – a sea-green lake obscured in the forest’s depths, and one of the capital’s main water sources. When the midday sun drives me reluctantly back to my lodge, I find a homemade lunch laid out under a shaded canopy of trees: whole grilled fish, cassava wedges, spiced couscous and a devilishly oily tomato and vegetable stew.

Tacugama has set itself a goal to be 100% self-sufficient by 2020, and its growing tourism program is a big part of the plan. In addition to the hiking trails, the sanctuary offers occasional yoga retreats on a serene, open-air platform in the heart of the rainforest, and half-day bird-watching tours, which begin at dawn with a breakfast of eggs, coffee and fresh fruit. Going forward, the team plans to create a brand-new information centre and spa, plus host cookery classes, events and concerts – as well as ensure that each lodge has hot water and plug sockets (currently in very short supply).

Though ambitious, each of these endeavours will require employing people from the local community – another core part of the Tacugama philosophy, whose outreach work proves that conservation is just as crucial for protecting people as it is for animals.

“We’re not just here for chimps,” insists Amarasekaran. “Sierra Leone is a poor country and when people are hungry, it’s difficult for them to practise conservation. We’re working with 44 communities and providing them with economic alternatives that don’t lead to human-chimp conflict: growing crops that chimps don’t eat, like cassava, ground nut and rice, or giving farmers fertiliser so they don’t slash and burn.”

As I climb into the beaten-up 4×4 that’ll take me back to Freetown, I reflect on the unique history of Sierra Leone that’s left its people and its chimps with such complex challenges. Yet the Tacugama sanctuary has managed to safeguard its family – human and chimpanzee – from both civil war and the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and it’s clear that Amarasekaran’s dedication is only growing stronger as years go by. “For me, Tacugama is not a sanctuary – it’s a movement,” he concludes. “However hard things get, I don’t see this as work. I’ve made a promise to take care of these chimps for the rest of their lives. That’s the deal.” tacugama.com