Orienteering as a sport is heavily dependent on all the wonderful volunteers, doing everything from making the maps, through organising and planning, to parking cars, giving advice to newcomers, managing the start, looking after the IT kit or being available to give first aid. Without them, there would be few if any events.
So if you enjoy your orienteering, please lend a hand when you can – it can be a lot of fun, doesn’t have to take huge amounts of your time, and will help a lot of people enjoy our sport.
On the day
There are a variety of different on-the-day helper roles, and usually you can express a preference for which you take on, although obviously we do need to balance the numbers – there’s no point having six people at the start if no-one is running registration!
Where possible, we will run a “shift” system so that volunteers can have a run too if they wish (at a discounted price!) – and the more volunteers we have, the more likely we can do this.
Volunteering for an on-the-day helper job is a great way to meet your club-mates and will serve as valuable experience if you decide later on to take on an event organiser role (and don’t be frightened by that – it’s not compulsory, and you’ll start small and have lots of help and advice as you learn!).
Behind the scenes
There are also lots of opportunities to help away from events, whether that’s taking on a committee role or getting involved in publicity, coaching, organising permissions, mapping… If there’s something that interests you, or you have a particular skill to offer, please contact a committee member.