We are the Orienteering Foundation, a charity that promotes and supports orienteering, to bring all the benefits this amazing sport has to offer the people of the UK, and to ensure that our sport is here for the enjoyment of generations to come.
But the future of our sport is at risk. Only 10% of our orienteering community is aged between 20-34 and in 2017 nearly 10,000 school children participated in our grassroots schemes. Worryingly despite this good work we are seeing drop out rates of 70-80% in those crucial skill building years of ages 13-21.
And our volunteers are getting tired. Last year there was a 4% drop in the number of events run, but a 7% increase in competitors. The demands outside events also continue to rise. We know people want to participate in our sport but we are in danger of burning out our volunteers.
Technology in the sport provides massive opportunity but we need to invest. We have all seen major changes over the past twenty years with the emergence of electronic punching and tracking systems, mapping software, and online analysis tools.
With your support the Orienteering Foundation works to tackle emerging issues. We currently fund junior programmes, invest in elites, support adult coaching opportunities, support those developing tools and techniques to alleviate volunteer workloads, and sponsor projects which look to exploit new technologies in our sport. With your help we can do more.
We are delighted to announce we will be supporting Charlotte Ward and Cecilie Andersen as they compete as part of the GBR team at the World Cup Finals in China.
We are pleased to report our campaign raised over £2000 towards supporting our athletes representing GBR at WOC 2019.
Julian Lailey successfully completed the Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge on Thursday 15th August 2019, raising over £1000 for juniors via the Orienteering Foundation.
The Orienteering Foundation regrets to announce that Malcolm Duncan has decided to step down as a Trustee with immediate effect as he is no longer able to participate fully in meetings and email discussions
We are pleased to hear Julian Lailey will be attempting the Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge and raising money part of which will be for the Orienteering Foundation.
We are proud to be supporting a dedicated fundraising campaign to power the GBR team to the World Orienteering Championships 2019 in Norway.
The Orienteering Foundation is pleased to announce support for another coaching day in the Lakes on Saturday 23rd November 2019, in a similar format to the one back in November 2018 (you can find a review here). We are particularly keen to promote coaching of adult orienteers, who are often under-served, but also welcome groups including juniors. Details of the day are below. Put the date in your diaries, and either sign up as an individual, or think about encouraging your club to attend as a group!
We have made a grant to support a proof of concept open source and low cost alternative to SPORTident and EMIT timing systems.