The implementation of World Orienteering Day (WOD) shows that there are many people with a lot of passion to develop orienteering worldwide. You and your great work made it possible! You are very important and without you and your contribution we wouldn’t have any successful World Orienteering Days!
On Wednesday May 24th 2017, the second World Orienteering Day took place all over the world. It has proved an even greater success than last year, with 288 007 participants all around the world taking part in an orienteering event. This is new record, with 35 000 more participants than last year. Following the idea “Be part of something bigger-Colour the World”, people all over the world took part in locally organised orienteering events, and celebrated the biggest world-wide orienteering event ever.
There are many great examples from a lot of countries with increasing participants compared to last year and we also have to welcome new countries and territories, such as Cambodia, Lebanon, Philippines, Kosovo, Isle of Man, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mauritius, Luxembourg and Antarctica. Without World Orienteering Day, it has been quite difficult to get all these countries involved in orienteering.
The President of International Orienteering Federation (IOF) Leho Haldna says:
– The global reach of the World Orienteering Day project made it clear already last year that it is an important way to spread orienteering, especially to young people. This is particularly important as it is in line with the key objective of the IOC Olympic Agenda 2020: engaging youth through sport. It has been inspiring to follow the many events on the WOD website and to see the wide spread of events. I am already looking forward to next year’s event.
WOD evaluation has been sent out
We want to continue our cooperation with you and therefore the evaluation of WOD 2017 is very important to get your view of WOD and your experience to make WOD even greater next year. Please give the evaluation 10 minutes of your time to share your opinion about WOD. Even if you didn’t implement any WOD this year your voice is important. You will receive the evaluation to your registered email address.
IOF’s vision regarding WOD:
The International Orienteering Federation´s goals regarding the organisation of this annual event are as follows:
- Increasing the visibility and accessibility of orienteering to young people
- Increasing the number of participants both in the schools’ activities, as well and in the clubs’ activities in all countries of National Federations
- To get more new countries to take part in orienteering
- Helping teachers to implement orienteering in a fun and educational way
WOD shall follow this vision and the evaluation will show if WOD is great part of this mission.
Many thanks in advance and once again, many thanks for your contribution to a successful WOD!
Göran Andersson
Project Coordinator, WOD