In 2018, seventeen-year-old Chloe Kim stunned the world with a gold-medal performance in the Winter Olympics women’s halfpipe, making history as the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding medal. Yet as her achievement took center stage, much of the discourse that followed focused less on her technical mastery and more on her physical appearance–offering just a glimpse into the lives of female athletes as they face unwarranted sexualization and scrutiny within male-dominated sports.
Motion-focused adventure sports such as snowboarding, surfing, and skateboarding have held restrictive, gender-normative narratives that have historically pushed women out of their scope. But organizations like CARVE BUNNiES rewrite these stories.
What started out as a group of female snowboarders trying to find community turned into a nationwide model that fosters participation, engagement, and access to an entire range of unconventional sports for women of all ages and backgrounds. Hosting skiing, snowboarding, biking, rollerblading, and skateboarding events, these women have carved out spaces to encourage confidence, self-expression, and camaraderie.
This is an organization founded by women, for women. Sports are more than just activities—they are empowering lifestyles; pathways to freedom. Their mission is to ensure that everyone gets to participate in the activities that increase the quality of our lives, without shame or embarrassment. CARVE BUNNiES delivers a medley of community events, skill-building retreats, and educational workshops where women can express themselves wholly and without fear.
CitizensNYC is proud to support the launch of their Roll & Thrive Pop-Up Skate Park Series, which reimagines underused public plazas and empty parking lots as dynamic skating hubs. With modular ramps, rails, and ledges, these pop-ups turn overlooked space into real civic infrastructure: welcoming “third spaces” where communities can gather and grow.
Each event offers more than a place to skate: group lessons, first-aid training, repair demos, and resource tables that connect people to what they need. Roll & Thrive expands action sports by doing what CitizensNYC believes in most: building community-led solutions that strengthen local leadership, invite young people in, and activate public space with purpose.
CARVE BUNNiES reminds us how powerful it is to show up. And their mission has stretched beyond city streets and ski mountains, burrowing into local schools and neighborhoods in the Dominican Republic. The Beyond Borders initiative commits to expanding youth access to education and essential resources within these communities. The program offers transportation funds for students, classroom tools and supplies, and hands-on learning materials. It is more than just pens and pencils; these classrooms are now equipped with laptops, a commercial refrigerator for student lunches, and a functioning water tank.
Beyond Borders makes the throughline clear: CARVE BUNNiES is in the business of removing barriers—wherever they show up. On the mountain and on the pavement, that means dismantling what keeps women and gender-nonconforming people from taking up space in play. In classrooms, it means investing in mobility, tools, and opportunity. Different settings. Same commitment: uplift youth, support women, and back communities that have too often been overlooked.
With Roll & Thrive and Beyond Borders, CARVE BUNNiES and CitizensNYC encourage you to move without fear, seek community, and go for gold.
