Introduction of PWT team

The PWT working team is small these days and the work is on a voluntary basis, but we make the best of it. To introduce the team, below you can read a short Q&A with Tuomas and Giulia.

1. Who are you? Age, club, etc.?

2. What is your background, your work, hobbies?

3. What do you know about PWT?

4. You work as a volunteer for PWT, do you have time for it?

Tuomas Kari:

1. First, I am an eager orienteer. I come from Finland, and on a club level I represent Angelniemen Ankkuri (from Salo), which is the one and only club for me as I have represented it all my life, ever since I started orienteering at the age of seven. Thus, I’ve been with the club for almost 30 years now. At the moment, I live in Jyväskylä, where, by the way, a PWT event was held back in 1997.

2. I work as a postdoctoral researcher. My main research interest is the use of technology in everyday life, especially in the context of health and wellness. Hence, I am also professionally interested on how people use digital technologies to support their physical activity and exercise (orienteering among them). Besides my work and orienteering, I don’t really have time for other hobbies, but I am an avid foodie keeping a close eye (and mouth) on the food and restaurant scene.

3. I ran my first PWT race in Lonigo, Italy in 2008. Before that I had followed PWT competitions from the Internet, magazines, and I even remember some TV broadcast from the early days. Since the race in Lonigo 2008, I have actually been present at every single PWT race; always as a runner, though not all competitions I’ve been able to start due to injuries. Having said that, I’ve also been doing volunteer work for PWT since 2012; first some years mainly with the web site (writing under the alias Madi), but later on with a growing role, also helping out with other activities and tasks. During this time, I have come to learn various stories and the history of the Park World Tour. The amazing work that PWT has done for orienteering promotion since 1996 is impossible to present in few words – I will just say it has my utmost respect.

4. I lead a busy life with generally rather long working days. To balance it, I do my daily runs and take part in different orienteering activities and competitions. Thus, “free time” is often somewhat minuscule. However, for a good cause that I find important and meaningful, such as the PWT idea, I am always willing to make time for. It does not feel like “work” when it is something close to your heart and something you see value in. I am happy to be able to help and promote the PWT idea.

Giulia Zenere:

1. I’m Giulia, I’m Italian, I live between Venice and Verona, I’m 35 this year.

2. I played basketball for 20 years, and tried many other sports: swimming, tennis, volleyball… I met orienteering during the middle school, but I didn’t continue with it. I graduated in languages, then I travelled in Australia for 1 year to improve my English. When I came back in 2010, I started to work with Park World Tour Italy and I continued until December 2019. After a couple of years of yoga practice, in 2015 I started a Yoga Teacher Course and I became Yoga Teacher, which is actually my current work. In the last couple of years I also had the possibility to teach yoga combining it with orienteering events of Park World Tour Italy 🙂

3. I know Park World Tour aims to spread orienteering around the World and to make it accessible to everyone. This is also the aim of Park World Tour Italy, which by the way gave me the possibility to visit many big Italian cities and small villages, together with other Mediterranean countries. I know Park World Tour introduced new ideas and new format like the sprint race into the orienteering World, and I had the possibility of listening to many stories about the past times by Jaroslav Kacmarcik, Jörgen Mårtensson, and Gabriele Viale.

4. I am currently a Yoga teacher, and I have some free time during the week. For me, working as volunteer for Park World Tour is a nice way to meet new people from around the World and keep traveling around. Orienteers are nice people! And I like very much the atmosphere that PWT can create 🙂