By Anna Etra
Hella Epic, a skateboard charity, gave out skateboards at the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Monica on Sept 20.
After a safety demonstration by President and CEO of Hella Epic Adam Rubin â10 and Vice President Casper Stockwell â10, the nine Hella Epic members distributed 30 skateboards and the Boys and Girls Club provided safety gear.
Hella Epic is a California registered charity whose aim is to give skateboards to underprivileged children in order to keep them away from drugs and gangs, Rubin said. For their most recent event, Hella Epic collaborated with the Virginia Avenue Project and the Police Activities League.
According to their website, The Virginia Avenue Project is an after-school program that teaches performing arts and provides tutoring in order to help kids discover their full potential. All three organizations selected 10 kids, based on their economic profiles, to receive the skateboards.
Each childâs family makes less than $30,000 a year.
In addition to the 30 boards, the Boys and Girls club has six rentable skateboards for the kids to use.
Hella Epic was born from a conversation about skateboard lingo in Northern and Southern California. Rubin and Stockwell believed their name would symbolically represent their charityâs goal of bringing communities together. For all their work distributing skateboards in East Los Angeles, Mexico and Santa Monica, the Virginia Avenue Project awarded Hella Epic with its Original Charity Award.
The award was given at a gala last Thursday at the Casa del Mar hotel in Santa Monica, in front of 300 people.
At the gala, Hella Epic auctioned off two of their celebrity-designed skateboards.
Some of the celebrities who have designed skateboards for Hella Epic include Emma Roberts, Randy Newman, the cast of MadMen and Alex Pettyfer.
Each skateboard is designed in collaboration with the Hella Epic graphic designer Riley Mate â10.
The remainder of the skateboards will be sold on Ebay.
In order to add to the $12,000 Hella Epic has already raised, plans to sell t-shirts in the quad.
