Help us take care of our trails!
Take Care of your Trails is a coordinated campaign to promote volunteer-based trail maintenance events happening across Europe during the month of May 2023.
The aim of the campaign is to highlight the quality and quantity of trail repair work that is happening across European mountain biking communities and to get more people involved in helping out with the maintenance of their local trails. We are looking for organisers of existing or new trail maintenance groups to sign up and run a trail maintenance event in the campaign month. Volunteers of all ages and abilities will hit their local trails to take part in the event.
What does our group
Need to offer
In order for your event to be included in the campaign, we’ve developed some (basic) event criteria. Should you have any questions about running an event, please contact us @ info@imba-europe.com
- The event needs to be either hosted by the landowner or you should have prior permission from the landowner to undertake your trail repair or trail building session.
- You should ensure that you have the necessary insurance in place to run your event (when applicable in your region, state, country)
- You should ensure that you have an appropriately experienced or qualified leader for your event.
- You should ensure that you have sufficient leaders based on the size of your group. We would recommend a 1:6 ratio for any work which is requiring use of hand-tools.
- You should ensure that you have adequate First Aid provision to meet the needs of the group and work location.
- You should ensure that you complete a volunteer sign-in sheet prior to commencing work. This should include names and emergency contact numbers.
- You should ensure that volunteers are adequately briefed prior to the event and adequately supervised during the event.
- You should ensure that you have a range of tasks planned to suit the ages and experience levels of your group e.g. litter picking for those without experience or appropriate personal protective equipment.
- If you are running a session which is offered to children or young people (under 18) your group should have the necessary child protection measures in place or be clear that any children or young people who wish to attend will need to be accompanied by a supervising responsible adult.
How to
register a group
The form (link below) will take you through all relevant information – including the day(s) you are taking part and what you are planning to do. Please complete the registration form before April 15th . Groups responding after this date will still be included but will miss the benefit of being part of the launch.
To give your crew the recognition you all deserve, we ask that you provide a short bio and photo in the ‘registration form’. Make sure to follow IMBA Europe on Instagram, Facebook & Twitter to see your crew featured during the campaign period!
What happens
after registering
Your event will be added to the ‘Take Care of Your Trails’ map on this website, along with your event link for volunteers to register and contact details.
We recommend that you manage local promotion and promote your event to your existing volunteers & through your social media channels. We will also be making a BIG push on our own socials, so be sure to TAG IMBA Europe, and send through any images of your crew.
We made a DIGITAL PROMO TOOLKIT for you with social media images. Please feel free to send us updates via email on your events, as well as tagging us in anything you may share on social media.
What will happen
after the event
After your event, we will ask you to provide the number of volunteers that participated at your trail repair, build or clean-up session and the approx. number of hours they worked on the site. That will give us a good indication of the impact of the campaign (something we will highlight towards municipalities, land managers, Nat. Park authorities etc.). Due to the new GDPR directives, we won’t ask you to provide names of the volunteers but instead, we kindly ask you to provide a group picture of all volunteers.
We’ll also arrange press coverage after the event, including the total number of groups and volunteers and award winners (Trail Advocate of the Year, Youth Trail Advocate of the Year, Europe’s Most Outstanding Trail Crew, Protect and preserve award and Outstanding Trail Association ). Furthermore, this year the award winners of the 2023 campaign will be announced at our annual summit in Val Poschiavo (Switzerland), June 1st- June 3rd. Find out more information here.
