We are pleased to announce the winners of this year’s ‘Take Care of Your Trails’ campaign.
Take Care of Your Trails is an annual campaign organised and run by IMBA Europe to promote trail stewardship, community engagement, conservation and preservation of our trail networks. This year during the month of May, we made a real push through our social media channels to engage as many people as possible across Europe to sign up and participate in a local trail maintenance campaign. Considering most countries were still in some form of ‘lock down’ during this period, we were extremely impressed by the level of engagement from all the groups that participated. In total, 92 activities took place in 15 EU countries. More than 1000 volunteers contributed approx. 6700 hours of volunteer work. A huge THANK YOU to all groups and volunteers that contributed to the 2021 campaign!
As part of the campaign, we reward and recognise the individuals and crews who go above and beyond in their efforts to maintain and preserve their trail networks. We were extremely pleased to partner with Specialized Bicycles again this year as one of the leading sponsors for the prizes and SRAM for their continuing MTB advocacy support. We are also very grateful to EVOC and Trailboss USA for providing all the tools and equipment our crews need to continue on with their incredible work.
This year we decided to include three sub categories as part of the ‘Outstanding Trail Crew’ award. These crews distinguished themselves by innovative and refreshing trail projects; by making a positive contribution to the local community, by protecting the places they love to ride; by creative volunteer recruitment strategies or by ways to make the MTB community more inclusive. The three new award categories were as follows;
- Most Inclusive Project
- Most Innovative Project
- Best Conservation Project
Part of the award categories is also recognising the ‘Trail Advocate of the Year award’ for both men and women. This award is to recognize an individual who goes above and beyond expectations within their club/organisation. Someone who is doing something exceptional, and in turn is nominated by someone for the award.
The hardest task is always choosing the winners, and after much deliberation between the board members of IMBA and our sponsors, we have decided the 2021 award winners are;
- Most Inclusive Project- Shape n Ride Bagnols
- Most Innovative Project- Vivabike Valposchiavo
- Best Conservation Project- Tommy Wilkinson / DW Agency
- Trail Advocate of the Year (F) – Sarah Wälde
- Trail Advocate of the Year (M) – Ludovic Lechner
To learn more about this year’s winners and all their work, head over to the ‘Take Care of Your Trails’ website via this link.
If you didn’t sign up for this year’s campaign, not to worry, we will be back in 2022, expecting to see more trail days popping up on our map!