Author: admin - Jaroslav

In the last days, the first World Orienteering Day hit Mauritius for the very first time. 

Many events were organized all over the country and hundreds of teachers and students were involved. 

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This success was made possible thanks to the great work of the new-born Mauritius Orienteering Federation, spreading the knowledge of Orienteering through a webinar held earlier this year, aimed to prepare dozens of Physical Educators to introduce Orienteering sport in their classes. 

After this initial webinar of 10 lessons prepared by Park World Tour Academy in cooperation with IOF, a second webinar, prepared for a selected group of teachers, deepened the topic of map making. 

Last week, when the schools were still on holiday, the Physical Educators gathered and trained together at the Quartier Militaire SSS (Girls). 

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During this week, with the resumption of the studies, the same PEs tested their students with orienteering activities. In the pictures and in the videos you can see the enthusiastic participation of many young orienteering beginners!

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The cooperation between IOF, Mauritius Orienteering Federation and Park World Tour Academy intends first to develop orienteering in this beautiful country, and then to organize an International Orienteering event as soon as the Covid situation will allow it. 
Therefore, a first visit of IOF and Park World Tour Academy delegates is planned for the early October. 
During this visit, the PEs participating to the webinar will be trained in practice; another live seminar (including theory and practice) will be held for interested Mauritians, draft of maps will be finalized so the local schools could organize Orienteering events, surveys will be done to find the most suitable places for a future international Orienteering event, including map making according to IOF standards. 

Last week Park World Tour, in cooperation with Global Development Commission of IOF and key stakeholders from Mauritius sporting community, began the online Orienteering Seminar with the first meeting.

Mr. Tom Hollowell, CEO of IOF, introduced the seminar and explained how to include Mauritius to IOF to 20 selected attendees, most of them are Physical Education Teachers, everyone willing to introduce or deepen the knowledge of Orienteering in the schools of their country.

Mr. John Domah moderated the seminar, where each participant introduced her/himself. Mr John Domah is a key person for this great journey of Mauritius to IOF, he participated to the O-Ringen Academy in 2019 and had been in contact with Park World Tour since then.

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Ms. Giulia Zenere of Park World Tour Academy introduced herself, she will lead one of the lessons about Orienteering event organisation.

Mr. Jaroslav Kacmarcik took the speech to introduce the idea of Orienteering, some history, the biggest O-events, the history and successes of Park World Tour, together with the preliminary program of the seminar which will include knowledge about map making and how to introduce orienteering in the schools.

The group of Mauritius already started to work hard right after the first online meeting.

• An online press conference with Tom Hollowell and Jaroslav Kacmarcik has been scheduled for the 1st of April;
• the entries to the online seminar have been opened to all the people from Mauritius interested in knowing more about orienteering;
• and in only one week already 85 people signed in through their website http://www.orienteeringmauritius.org/

The seminar will continue with a weekly schedule. Stay tuned!

We wish Happy Easter to all orienteers and families!

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 🙂

Dear readers, elite athletes, orienteers,

I am using the Park World Tour (PWT) website to say a few words to you.

We opened the new PWT website from 1st of January 2020 to support our work to renew the PWT idea. Despite these challenging times, we continue with this work, but as all of you know, most of the work is halted at the moment. Nobody knows how long this exceptional situation with the pandemic will last, but I hope to see you again very soon in the forests, parks, and cities. I know many of you are keeping on with training and continuing with the “theoretical” work at your homes/countries.

Likewise, PWT works like that. From our homes, we keep on planning, following all the information from IOF, and what happens in different O-Federations. We are still working with the ideas for autumn PWT TOURS, if the situation will permit to travel at the time of course. Your/our health is a priority. IOF has cancelled many major international events, PWT Italy had to cancel MOC and MOC camp of this spring, as is the same with many national events. It is difficult to guess what will happen with the first sprint WOC. Perhaps in this very special time even the sprint WOC in Denmark should be postponed to the end of September, to allow for a fairer preparation for all countries.

2020 is the 25 years anniversary of PWT, as first events were in 1996. To celebrate this, we are preparing the PWT memory book, and the work with this book is ongoing. The aim was to have the book ready for the first sprint WOC in Denmark. But now as everything is going slower, even the book preparation will be delayed a little. Nevertheless, the book will be ready by autumn 2020. More information about the book will be published on our homepage in the near future. Runners, leaders, organizers, ”old” PWT crew/council are approached to help in filling this book with interesting memories.

PWT has no sponsors, but during the last few years PWT has had very good partners, which continued to build up programs (Tours) for elite runners. I would like to thank all partners – old and new (Learnjoy, Nordic Ways, Kisakallio, and many others). Without them, the PWT idea would have faded away. I also want to mention PWT Travel and PWT Italy, which have kept promoting PWT logo during all these years; this was a way to make people know about PWT around the world. The logo has been used by PWT Travel and PWT Italy in different ways from the original idea, but both of them have aimed to develop orienteering in new countries. PWT Travel has focused more on veterans and travels in new countries, whereas PWT Italy has focused more on elite runners, working closer to the original PWT idea and organising MOC competitions every spring starting from some of the first big PWT races in the past, such as Alberobello and Matera.

I hope the PWT idea is and will keep existing: competing at the same economic conditions, fairness, prize money, for all runners irrespective of nationality.

Our working team is very small these days and the work is on a voluntary basis, but we make the best of it. The new website was the first step. PWT Academy is another idea we are working on. To help new countries under IOF umbrella is also our goal (Nepal, Mauritius, India, Cuba, …). I would like to present my team and working partners who are helping me with the practical work to continue with the PWT idea: Tuomas Kari and Giulia Zenere. You can read their introduction in the next posts coming up this week.

Jaroslav Kacmarcik
PWT

Due to the current situation with COVID-19 all decisions regarding PWT Academy scholarship in connection with O-Ringen Academy will be postponed to the end of April 2020. 

More info here

Jaroslav Kacmarcik visited Kathmandu as IOF representative in beginning of January and visited all areas proposed by Nepal Orienteering Federation. For more info and pictures, see here