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Share  Tweet Sunday 6th June 2021

Day 7: Volunteer Week - Thank You to Kay Hawke (Pendle Forest Orienteers)

British Orienteering is saying thank you to all who give endless hours of their time and energy to our sport every week. 

British Orienteering continues with expressing much appreciation and saying thank you to more individuals across the UK. 

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In the 'Thank You Spotlight' is....

Kay Hawke (Pendle Forest Orienteers)

Kay Hawke (Pendle Forest Orienteers)
Helping at an event

Kay has been instrumental in planning virtual events throughout the lockdown to encourage not only existing team members to take part in activities whilst, but also to engage with the local Schools Sports Partnerships team in both Rossendale and Burnley to encourage primary school children to get involved with a variety of orienteering based activities.  These have included Maprun courses , ‘Lamp-post’ courses’, Christmas and Halloween trails. She has also instigated a competition with South Ribble Orienteering Club (SROC) using the Turf App to encourage club members to get out running during the lockdown. 

She has also planned and helped organise most of the events that the club has managed to put on during the periods of lockdown, these have included both conventional orienteering and street orienteering events. 

As a direct result of her involvement with the Schools Sports Partnership we have seen a number of new members join our club and regularly participate in Virtual Orienteering Courses and our ‘Turf’ competition against neighbouring SROC. 

Andy Ellis (member of Pendle Forest Orienteers), says: 
"Kay joined Pendle Forest Orienteers (PFO) at the end of 2019 with limited experience of orienteering.  She has motivated PFO members at all levels throughout these difficult times and has had a direct positive impact upon the clubs membership.  She is extremely motivated and manages to pass her enthusiasm onto other club members and potential members." 

British Orienteering would like to thank Kay for all her hard work and the contribution to her club has been amazing! 

Is there anything that you are particularly proud of that you would like us to shine a spotlight on?

Kay, says: 
“Yes please, I would like to highlight community collaboration, awareness and promotion.

Through my collaboration with local School Sports Partnerships (Rossendale, Burnley SSP) since June 2020 in creating local Orienteering schemes we have had a massive increase in participation, local community interest and involvement and as such new members join the club.

A series of Maprun Challenges (6 events) around Rossendale and Burnley were launched as a month-long Schools competition (Primary and High School) in June 2020 with prizes for the school with the most competitors on the courses and the fastest times on it in each Year Group. These were so popular that the scheme was extended to adults with a great uptake.

Following on from the initial success, I then created a series of Orienteering Trails in the school holidays in October/December using simple Street Orienteering maps for the community to try and complete. With each trail, they had to follow the map to an A4 poster on the lamppost to find our logo and a word - for Halloween it was a spooky word for Christmas it was a day of the 12 Days of Christmas song. Again, in collaboration with Rossendale SSP this was promoted within all of the local schools in the area, over both of our social media pages and Rossendale SSP and ourselves provided prizes and medal for all that took part. Pictures were published in local media and interest in the club grew even more.

Our biggest community collaboration was at Easter 2021 when we joined with Rawtenstall Market and Rossendale SSP to create 3 Eater Trails over the school holidays all starting and finishing at the market. These trails were so popular that Rawtenstall Market who had offered a reward of a sweet bag from one of their traders to all who completed the course and handed in their answer sheets by the time the trails ended.  They ran out of sweet bags - over 300!

The community involvement has directly increased our membership numbers, involved many members of the club in creating local trails, increased the club’s profile within the community and has had a knock-on effect at numbers turning up to events, club runners for example that have completed the trails as part of a training run then turning up to our Street O events that followed shortly after.”

 

How did you get into Volunteering?

Kay continues: “After living in the local area for over 15 years and attending my first Pendle Forest Orienteers (PFO) event in 2019 I realised that even though they were my local club and I enjoyed orienteering I had never come across their events before. All of the club were very welcoming to me at my first event and so I continued to carry on going to events, joining shortly after as a PFO member. When I joined I offered to take the lead in the SM and promotion of the club as I believed that it was a great club hosting great events and there would be plenty more people in the community such as myself that would attend if they knew what we did and what we offered!  Being part of such a great club makes volunteering easy as we are all supportive of new ideas, willing to help and give up our time to make them happen and see the great work all of our initiatives are doing in the community.”

Thank you Kay!  Thank you for all you have done, and for all you continue to do for the sport of orienteering. 

How you can get involved with Volunteers' Week?
Each day is a chance to take the time to say thank you to volunteers across the UK.
Share your own story about volunteering during a pandemic over the past 12 months, inspire others to get involved in volunteering, or say thank you to an amazing volunteer you know using #VolunteersWeek! 

Don't forget to include British Orienteering in all of your posts:
https://twitter.com/gbrorienteering
https://www.facebook.com/britishorienteering

Inspire others to volunteer! 
Have you got any personal volunteering stories which British Orienteering can publish on the website as part of the Volunteer's Week to inspire others?  Email:   jtaylor@britishorienteering.org.uk

#VolunteersWeek  #Orienteering 

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