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Volunteer Update - January 2021

Whilst the majority of parkrun events in the world remain closed, we are still supporting over 400 weekly events and 60,000 walkers, joggers, runners and volunteers. Right now these are mostly across the Asia Pacific region, however, we do hope that many more events will come online in the first half of the year.

The Virtual Volunteer

As part of our work to adapt the way we deliver parkrun events in the time of COVID-19, we developed our Virtual Volunteer timing and scanning application, making it compulsory across all events, removing all timing and scanning hardware, and defining a minimum number of scanning volunteers (one per 50 finishers).

So far, this has proved to be an incredible success, with the task of capturing and processing results being significantly improved, and volunteers around the world have engaged with it brilliantly.

If your event hasn’t reopened yet, we’d thoroughly recommend downloading the latest version of the Virtual Volunteer from either the App Store (Apple) or the Google Play Store so that you can familiarise yourself with it. Please also see here for the guide to scanning and timing at parkrun events.

New ‘group’ functionality

Since the start of parkrun, we have allowed people to declare an affiliation with a running club or group. However, that function has always been limited in that it was not possible to connect yourself to more than one.

Excitingly, we have now changed this system such that you are able to choose multiple (up to five) clubs or groups that you belong to. For example, you could let us know that you’re a member of your running club, and also your charity running team.

To find out more, and edit your club or group affiliation, please visit your parkrun profile.

Thanks for your ongoing support,