Orienteering
First day of O-Ringen Academy, Thursday 20th July 2023
Started with training in Otssjö,
continued with a visit to the O-Ringen square, where Nuno from Mozambique,
Ricardo from Colombia and Paul from Malaysia where interviewed
by Per Forsberg of Radio O-Ringen, who also interviewed Jaroslav Kacmarcik.
Recently, Giulia – Project Manager of PWT Academy, visited the Lovely Professional University of Jalandhar, Punjab (LPU) with the help of Dev Balhara.
Successful meetings were held with Dr Sorabh Lakhanpal, Associate Dean at Division of Students Affairs and Dr. V. Kaul, Professor and Associate Director – Division of Sport, who are keen to introduce orienteering and add a new sport to the 26 already practiced at the LPU.
The campus of the University is very big, 6km square, more than 25.000 students, 150 programs, students from more than 26 countries, and it is suitable to host both orienteering seminars but also orienteering races.
Saturday 09/10 Mr Jaroslav Kacmarcik – IOF GDC and Giulia Zenere – PWT Academy, conducted a workshop on Teaching Orienteering in Schools at MIE – Mauritius Institute of Education for more than 80 Educators of Physical Education and HEP Educators.
Some of the Educators already followed the online webinar of April-June 2021, some introduced Orienteering in their schools and also participated with their school activities in the World Orienteering Week this year. Indeed, it was the very first participation of Mauritius in the WOD: a great success!
Some other Educators participated for the first time to the workshop on Orienteering.
The workshop consisted in a theorical part in the morning, and a practical part in the afternoon.
The Educators were tested on a simple course using for their very first time the Sport Ident system.
All the participants received a certificate of participation, Mr Gilbert Quéland of Domain de Lagrave was also present to the certificates delivery.
A complete set of Sport Ident System, together with orienteering flags and stands were presented to the local Federation by Park World Tour Academy for their future use.
Orienteering M awarded Mr Jaroslav Kacmarcik and Ms Giulia Zenere with a trophy for the unflinching support for the development of orienteering in Mauritius.
Mr Jaroslav Kacmarcik, also IOF delegate of the Global Development Commission, and Ms Giulia Zenere, delegate of Park World Tour Academy, were welcomed by the Orienteering M, temporary Orienteering Federation of Mauritius.
The purposes of the visit were to develop orienteering as sport in the school system and find suitable venues for orienteering races, both for school competitions and for international events.
Mr John Domah leaded the operative team of Mauritius, and organised the very first meeting on the Island straight after the flight arrival of the international delegates on 06/10 with the Director of NPCS National Park and Conservation Service Mr. Kevin Ruhomaun and his staff.
The Director illustrated the huge work of Park management, endangered species recovery and conservation of terrestrial biodiversity and, being Orienteering sport so green and respectful of nature, expressed his interested in hosting orienteering events in the parks.
The focus was pointed mainly to 2 of the the 3 National Parks of Mauritius: Black River Gorges and Bras d’Eau.
Black River Gorges National Park is situated in the South West of the island, and covers an area of 6574 ha. It harbours most of our flowering plants, bird species and some reptiles which are native to Mauritius. In 1977, part of the BRGNP was designated Man and the Biosphere reserve, by the UNESCO.
Bras d’Eau is located in the North East of the island. It covers a total area of 497.2 ha and is mainly under Mahogany, Araucaria, Tecoma and Eucalyptus plantations. The name Bras d’Eau originated from the outline of the mass of water protruding in the land in the shape of an arm between Pointe Radeau and Belcourt Bay.
The visit to the Parks were scheduled for the next days.
(continues in the next post…)
