ORIENT Curriculum

Introduction

The present document has been developed in the framework of the project ORIENT – Young explorers re-discover local communities through orienteering (622532-EPP-1-2020-1-IT-SPO-SCP), a 30-month project co-financed by the Erasmus+ SPORT programme of the European Union.

ORIENT stems from the idea of bringing together young people from different backgrounds through a particular grassroots sport: orienteering. The project aims to enhance social inclusion and foster capacity and community building by creating opportunities for young people from different social and cultural groups to socialize and develop new skills.

ORIENT adopts a multi-stakeholder approach, boosting cooperation among stakeholders, namely sports trainers and representatives from civil societies organisations. This approach will equip sports trainers’ and CSO’s workers with innovative methods to encourage the participation of vulnerable young people in sports activities at the community level. Through the practice of outdoor activities, young people will be encouraged to reflect on social inclusion issues while discovering urban and natural local contexts.

The ORIENT Curriculum is intended to be a learning tool for trainers to integrate orienteering into their practices with young people and organise orienteering activities to enhance social inclusion and cohesion among different social and cultural groups of youngsters at risk of social exclusion. The ORIENT Curriculum represents the main training material sports trainers and CSOs’ workers will learn from and refer to in the implementation of orienteering mapping activities.

Modules

1

ORIENTEERING, THE BASICS
AND THE OPPORTUNITIES

2

BUILDING INCLUSIVE
ENVIRONMENTS

3

MAPPING FOR INCLUSION,
FROM LOCATION TO ACTION

The project

ORIENT project has the following objectives:

  • Include vulnerable young people, at risk of social exclusion or socially excluded, in sport activities at community level;
  • Equip sport trainers, as well as sport associations and workers from civil society organisations (CSOs) working in the field of social inclusion with tools to promote the participation of vulnerable young people in the local community through a grassroots sport (Orienteering).
  • Enhance social inclusion across partner countries while raising awareness of societal barriers and social exclusion, promoting long-term and positive change at local level.

The activities planned during the project duration include:

  • Collection of inspiring good practices, tools and methodologies using orienteering for social inclusion (IO1)
  • Development of a curriculum about orienteering for social inclusion for sport trainers & CSOs (IO2)
  • Creation of a toolbox for orienteering routes for young people (IO3)
  • Co-creation of compendium with «routes of inclusion» from participatory mapping workshops and an orienteering contest (IO4)
  • Drafting a Manifesto with the potential of orienteering for social inclusion (IO5)

Finally, ORIENT expects to achieve the following results:

  • ORIENT ANTHOLOGY: good practices, tools and methodologies using orienteering for social inclusion.
  • ORIENT CURRICULUM: the basics on orienteering and innovative methodologies to promote the participation of vulnerable young people in orienteering activities.
  • GEARS & IDEAS: a toolbox for orienteering routes
  • ORIENT COMPENDIUM: “ROUTES TO INCLUSION”: co-created by sport trainers, civil society organizations’ workers and young people through participatory mapping.
  • ORIENT MANIFESTO: with results and recommendations on the potential of orienteering for social inclusion.

OBJECTIVES OF THE CURRICULUM

The ORIENT Curriculum is intended to be a learning tool for trainers to integrate orienteering into their practices with young people. The ORIENT Curriculum is divided into three sections:

    Orienteering, the basics and the opportunities

    This section offers a theoretical introduction to the world of orienteering needed and its applicability to urban and natural environments, enabling trainers to organize orienteering-based activities.

    Building inclusive environments

    This section provides the reader with practical guidelines on how to build inclusive environments to ensure the involvement of vulnerable young people in orienteering activities.

    Mapping for inclusion, from location to action

    This section provides a specific framework to design new thematic orienteering routes with young people and to organize mapping workshops with a co-creational approach.

    Thanks to the ORIENT Curriculum, sport trainers and CSOs workers will learn all the relevant information on orienteering and will have the opportunity to choose from a wide array of methodologies to carry out activities with young people, according to the specific needs of the target group they work with. For this reason, the ORIENT Curriculum is highly versatile and is easily transferable to new contexts.

    In order to prepare them and make them familiar with the realisation of orienteering activities, the Curriculum adopts a learning by doing and experiential learning approach, allowing sport trainers and CSOs workers to make a direct experience of orienteering before applying it with young people.

    The ORIENT Curriculum is the second intellectual output of the ORIENT project. The findings and the knowledge pooled through the research phase of the ORIENT Anthology (IO1) prepared the ground for the development of this educational curriculum, which will provide a set of concrete skills, tools and methodologies for sport trainers and civil society organization (CSOs) workers to implement orienteering based activities for social inclusion with young people through the ORIENT approach

    IMPACT & TARGET OF THE CURRICULUM

    The ORIENT Curriculum has two main targets:

    • Sports trainers and CSOs’ workers, who will gain practical knowledge on how to promote orienteering-based activities to foster social inclusion of vulnerable young people. The involvement of sports trainers and CSOs workers can promote a fruitful exchange of complementary skills: sports organisations can improve their engagement in the social field whereas CSOs can integrate sport into their daily work within the community.
    • Vulnerable young people will be impacted by the curriculum, as they will be able to access orienteering-based activities arranged by trainers. Youngsters will gain highly-valuable soft skills and increase their sense of belonging to a shared community.

    In terms of impact, the Curriculum is expected to have a direct effect on sports trainers and CSOs’ workers, who will be equipped with innovative methodologies and tools to promote the social inclusion of young vulnerable people. The youngsters will indirectly benefit from the Curriculum, as in the next project phases will have the opportunity to take part in engaging activities while building social bonds with their peers and local context. Furthermore, partner organisations of the ORIENT consortium will make use of this resource, acquiring innovative approaches to support the inclusion of local young people and therefore becoming closer to the local community and enhancing their local network and outreach.

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    Modules

    Home

    1

    ORIENTEERING, THE BASICS
    AND THE OPPORTUNITIES

    2

    BUILDING INCLUSIVE
    ENVIRONMENTS

    3

    MAPPING FOR INCLUSION,
    FROM LOCATION TO ACTION

    Home

    Module 1

    Module 2

    Module 3