Orienteering can be a valuable tool for building social networks and exploring one’s social, historical and cultural context.
Over the past 30 months, the ORIENT project has pursued its goal of promoting the social inclusion of young people while stimulating the discovery of their city and the development of new skills. A collection of good practices on the use of orienteering for social inclusion was put together in the Anthology. A Curriculum was also created to provide sports trainers and CSOs workers with tools and methodologies to organize orienteering activities for young people. Orienteering kits were then produced and distributed to young people, together with Gears & Ideas, a toolbox with the essential orienteering rules and regulations. Through participatory mapping workshops, young people mapped meaningful places of social and cultural value to create new orienteering routes. This resulted in the compendium of orienteering “routes to inclusion”. Last but not least, the Manifesto – a policy-oriented document – was created and published to show the potential of orienteering in fostering participation and social inclusion.
On June 14, 2023, on the occasion of the last transnational meeting for the ORIENT project, the international orienteering event, organized by the project partners from Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Erzgovina, Austria and Cyprus took place in Graz, Austria. During the morning, several students and their teachers were involved in an orienteering competition at the ASVÖ Styria sports center. After the competition, the major outputs of the project were presented to the teachers. In the afternoon, a meeting with orienteering experts was held instead, introduced by the sports director of the Orienteering Association Graz. During the event, several experienced orienteering sportsmen and sportswomen shared their best practices, mainly related to how to engage young people/students in this sport. Afterwards, the most important “orienteering for inclusion” achievements of the various ORIENT partner countries were presented by the project partners. The Orient project, after 30 months, has come to an end with this exciting event. Everything we learned from this experience and the methodology we developed will continue to be used.
About the project
ORIENT – Young explorers re-discover local communities through orienteering is cofinanced by Erasmus + SPORT, Collaborative Partnerships.
Partners
- CESIE (Italy, coordinator)
- BSDA – Bulgarian Sports Development Association (Bulgaria)
- WUS Austria – World University Service-Österreichisches Komitee (Austria)
- SMOC – Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
- KMOP – Social Action and Innovation Centre (Greece)
- CSI – Centre for Social Innovation (Cyprus)
For further information
Read more about ORIENT, visit the project website orientproject.eu and follow us on Facebook.
