Youth Mapping Program

OrienteeringUSA’s Youth Mapping Program (YMP) was developed to make it convenient for schools and non-profit youth organizations in the United States to get a good quality orienteering map made of their school or a nearby park to help in teaching orienteering. YMP map projects are intended to be small teaching maps, typically less than 0.5 km2 (~120 acres) in size. Schools participate in the creation of the map by working with the remote mapper to be their “eyes on the ground”.

The purpose of this program is threefold:

  1. To spread orienteering to as many youth as possible.
  2. To develop a self-sustaining process to match youth-serving non-profit organizations desiring maps with orienteering mappers and to provide a limited number of grants for map development.
  3. To provide a forum to share mapping practices and develop professional collaboration among our growing population of mappers.


Youth Groups and Schools interested in getting an orienteering map created should fill out this form.

Mappers for the Youth Mapping Program are cartographers as well as remote field checkers, guiding someone from afar with as precise instructions as possible on what to find or verify. More YMP mapping information can be found here. Mappers interested in working with the YMP program should apply here. 

The YMP committee will take information from schools, and match them up with mappers, and further pair them with a YMP map consultant ensuring the maps are drawn to international mapping standards.

Latest Maps

Locator Map

YMP Mapping Grant Program

The YMP Committee has limited funding to provide grants that can cover some or all of the cost of the mapper and map consultant.

Youth Mapping Program Manual

YMP Committee

  • Barbara Bryant (chair)
  • Andrea Schneider (applications)
  • Heidi Cusworth (contracts)
  • Eileen Breseman (outreach)
  • Bill Cusworth (head map consultant)
  • Contact: YMPCommittee@nullorienteeringusa.org