Sometimes a relatively simple cause becomes a full blown organization. In 1998 a handful of mountain bikers got together to help with the design and construction of a multi-use trail in a new park; today that group is the advocacy voice of mountain bikers for an entire region. The scope of todays charity focus in Oklahoma, Gateway Off-Road Cyclists (GORC), can be seen in this quote from their web page…
GORC has official relationships with St. Louis County Parks, St. Charles County Parks, St. Charles City, Missouri State Parks, Missouri Department of Conservation, Southern Illinois University (Edwardsville), and the US Forest Service. Our involvement with all of these agencies includes trail design, construction and maintenance, technical consulting, leading volunteer trail building events, and providing volunteers for the events.
This is, to say the least, a very engaged group. According to their website the average 4 hours volunteer session is attended by around 25 people and all of the over 34,000 hours, over 163 miles of trail maintenance, and over 94 miles of new trail designed and built have been completed with a force of 100% volunteer workers.
Many of the GORC members have formal training in trail design and creation and the organization takes a proactive approach, monitoring new trail announcements and showing up to offer assistance. Like many of the organizations I am drawn too, they seek less to raise money for their work and more to engage with new volunteers.
You can read more about them at their web page.