2024

Maija was promoted to Executive Director and we hired Mikayla as Program Manager. Our highly-functioning core team was rounded out this year by Jackson, Meka, Evalin and Kieran. With an "Innovation Grant" from Boston Harbor Now, we made maps of two islands and hosted 250 orienteers at two events there. We organized an orienteering championship race for NJROTC cadets from several states. In Cambridge, we added a culminating "jamboree" event to the 3rd grade curriculum, pitting the 12 schools against each other in an exciting Score-O style team race.

2023

With Maija's arrival as the lead executive for Navigation Games, we were able to do so much! We added middle and high school curricula to PE in Cambridge. We started working with the Public Schools of Brookline. We hosted five vistiing resident orienteers (including from the USA< Norway, France, and Mozambique). We started talking about school orienteering with folks in other countries via the International Orienteering Federation. And we rolled out our beginning teaching kit with animals designed by artist Marina Carlson.

2022

Most of our programs were co-taught by teachers from partner schools and organizations. We gave workshops at schools and conferences.

2021

The 3rd grade program in Cambridge expanded to a 6-lesson, 3-week unit. We started working with students at the Roger Clap school in Dorchester, and 500 students at the Sunita Williams school in Needham. We collaborated with the Appalachian Mountain Club to create a workshop in Boston. We delivered 954 classes and events, for 15,000 participants.

2020

COVID: we lost workers but then delivered many classes both online and in person (outdoors!). Did you know you can teach orienteering via Zoom? We figured out many ways to do it!

2019

We delivered 649 classes and events to over 9300 participants, using 25 staff members including 11 summer interns. We collaborated with 51 teachers to teach orienteering in schools, and reached 98 educators through presentations and workshops.

2018

Our vision: (1) every kid gets orienteering in PE; (2) a path to continued participation; (3) teaching life schools. We started talking about keeping it fun and enabling others to spread the curriculum.

2017

The main goal was reaching more children in Cambridge, MA (and beyond). Most of the income was donations, and most of the expenses were for personnel. We worked with 10 schools; four started teams with 100 student athletes participating. We taught at 9 summer camps with our MSYEP teens, and started a youth orienteering series in collaboration with NEOC and CSU. We ran after-school classes. We tried out the new Forest-X format for a public race (follow the streamers or take shortcuts using the map!). We worked with Amanda Klein at the Lincoln-Sudbury high school and presented our work at the annual PE teachers' conference in MA.