Changing the world, one ride at a time.

Founded in 2013, World Off-road Riding Department is a youth mountain bike charity based in Wellington, Wānaka, and Ōtautahi, Aotearoa providing amazing life changing adventures for 7-17 year olds.

Changes to WORD Ōtautahi for the upcoming season 2024

WORD Ōtautahi has made the difficult decision to pause its Term Programmes and Holiday Camps for the remaining summer season. 

Due to current challenges and constraints we are no longer able to continue operating in the same capacity. However, we are still deeply committed to our mission and will continue to explore ways to serve the community and youth in the future.

We also remain committed to delivering a couple of key projects within the Christchurch community over the next few months – read more about it here.


That’s a wrap!

What a year it’s been! We’re stoked to have had over 1000 rangatahi and tamariki riding with us across Aotearoa! Everything from our core term programmes and holiday camps to special events like the Thumb-riaser and Bike-a-palooza. Thanks to extra funding we ran new programmes specifically targeting girls and young women like the Dirt, Soul, and LOLs in Ōtautahi, and The WONDERS in Wānaka, a 4 week programme with the grand finale of a bike packing trip!

Check out our wrap up report for more goodness!


Changing the world… one ride at a time!

What started as an outsider with a crazy idea in 2013 has now exploded into the largest youth mountain bike charity in Aotearoa. WORD has taken a different approach to youth sport... Focusing on the adventure, connections with each other, self, and the environment, leadership, and a no excuses approach to gender equity, we are super proud to be truly making a difference to young people and their whanau in our communities.

Come join us for the ride!


Our Values

Youth Centered

Young people are at the heart of ALL decisions. For youth, with youth.

Adventure

We’re fun. We’ve got grit.  We’re risk takers. We’re bravely kind.

Connection

Connection to self. Connection to others. Connection to the environment.

Fight for Equity

We create access,  support, and celebrate diversity + equity - always.

Embracing change

Embrace change: Gather the knowledge to inform and guide. We adapt. We are agile.

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WORD is officially in Ōtautahi (Christchurch)!

After a successful year of piloting WORD programmes in 2022, we are ready to go BIG and fully launch Christchurch WORD in 2023! Ooooh yeah!

That means afterschool programmes in term 1 and 4, holiday camps in April & October and lots of extra goodies too.

We are so grateful to all our funders and supporters that have made it possible to move forward with Christchurch WORD. A special BIG shout out to the Rātā Foundation, the Sport Canterbury Tū Manawa fund and to all of you that have supported WORD along the way or cheered us on from the sidelines.


MORE

wāhine!

We’re stoked to be one of 9 organisations to be part of SportNZ’s Young Women’s Activation Fund. Over the next 2 years we will use this funding to focus on creating more opportunities for young women aged 12 to 18 at WORD.


Follow our adventures @wordnz

 
makara girls.jpg

Our two kids participated in WORD in term 4 as preparation for a week riding in Rotorua as a family over the holidays. Both of us “oldies” loved to ride before kids came along and this is the first time both kids have been old enough to enjoy a holiday based around such an activity, and therefore the first time in a long time that we have done so much riding ourselves!

Their confidence and skill level, and comfort riding for a couple of hours at a time meant that we had the greatest week in Rotorua then we could have imagined, with our 7 and 9 year old both comfortably tackling grade 3 tracks. Even greater to see was that the kids understood the importance of bike checks before riding and would diligently do their ABCD checks before hitting the trails, without being asked - very impressed.

We had a a blast and their term in WORD played a huge role in that as we could not commit the time to give them that exposure prior to the holiday ourselves.

— A happy WORD Parent