As this blog post is being written, it's snowing here in Kabul. In fact it's been snowing all day, and is supposed to continue snowing tomorrow. Most mornings for the past few weeks have been about -12°C (10°F) here in Kabul, and for a developing country without great electricity and heating arrangements, this creates challenges!

Despite the bitterly cold conditions being experienced by the people of Kabul, Skateistan activities continue!

Regular schools in Afghanistan don't operate during the winter months due to the difficulties caused by the freezing conditions. However, students continue to turn up to the Skateistan skatepark on a daily basis and are just as keen to skate as they are at any other time of year!

For example, right now the skatepark echoes with sounds of skateboards as a girls' skate class is underway, and other students continue classes in photography and wood-carving in the classrooms, while staff in the Skateistan office do everything possible to stay warm while they work.

Skateistan students recently took part in a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) drawing contest to promote the importance of gender equality in education.

This semester at Skateistan our curriculum is all about the arts, so the drawing contest was a perfect opportunity to explore how we can express ourselves visually. Each class had discussions about equality in education before starting the drawings back in September.

The winners were recently announced on the UNESCO website and one of our very own students, Hamdullah, was selected as a contest winner alongside other young artists from as far away as Bhutan, Timor and Mongolia. His drawing will be published in the UNGEI 2012 calendar.

Every month, we give you a snap-shot of Skateistan's most remarkable moments and people. We call these clips Yak Daqa, which means "1 minute" in Dari. This month we caught up with Fazila, star of our feature-length documentary, Four Wheels & A Board in Kabul, and one of four young women who recently traveled to Italy to represent Skateistan at a youth leadership event. Past Yak Daqa videos are available on our Youtube channel. You can watch the new installment below and share the link to let others know about it too...

Skateistan is honoured to announce that one of our photos has been voted Peace and Sport "Image of the Year". The photo was taken by Jake Simkin on June 21 2011, during Go Skateboarding Day in Kabul. It shows just a few of the 200+ Afghan girls and boys who marked that day by taking to the city streets to celebrate their sport, their culture, and their future.

According to Peace and Sport, over 5,000 people voted to elect the winning image, which got nearly 60% of the votes. Joel Bouzou, President and Founder of Peace and Sport, announced: "This picture is particularly outstanding. It tells us better than a thousand words that sport is a universal language understood by children around the world, capable of building bridges for understanding and friendship between peoples..." He stated that this photo shows how skateboarding, "acts as a genuine vehicle for peace education, as well as encouraging gender equality and inter-cultural understanding in Afghanistan.”