Select the Venue. This may depend on whether you are partnering with a local outdoor gear store. Indoors has the advantage of controlled environment and benefits the store more, but outdoors is obviously the best place to truly help people learn. Consider holding the clinic at at a local city or county park, recreation area or even a nearby school or church that has some land. Make sure you get permission from the landowner of the venue (e.g., city or county parks director) if your clinic will be an organized, publicly promoted event.

Your outdoor venue should ideally have some definable terrain (hilltops, gullies, trail junctions, water features, etc.) but you can still help people learn the basics anywhere that has an x (where you are) and y (where you’re going). If things go well and the venue works well, consider asking the landowner if you can set up a practice (“permanent”) orienteering course there so people can practice on their own (and you don’t have to hang flags every time you put on the clinic).

Create the Map and Presentation Materials. If your clinic will be outdoors, create a practice topograpic map of the park, rec area, school or other area with some pre-plotted checkpoints using an open source mapping tool (e.g., CalTopo). Make sure you plot your checkpoints accurately by downloading a free topo app on your phone. No need to reinvent the wheel. You can pull content from our clinic presentation materials, find online, or partner with an orienteering club as they may have the resources already. Consider asking racers what additional topics they would like to learn about such as gear choices, mountain bike and paddling tips, training, nutrition, and team dynamics.