Hello Internet!
Recently, I've had a couple of projects which I've been working on, one of them being the Duke of Edinburgh Award. I've briefly mentioned this in other posts but, because I think it's a great opportunity, I wanted to do a full post about it.
What is DofE?
Duke of Edinburgh is an award available for young people (aged between 14 and 24) in the UK. I'm not entirely sure if it's available in other countries but, if you're interested, I recommend that you find out.
The Award consists of 4 parts: Volunteering, Physical, Skills and an Expedition. For the first three, you need to do two of them for 3 months and one for 6 months. The expedition is different as this is to be organised in small groups of 4-7.
Volunteering
I've only just managed to get this section organised as I was struggling to find a place which I would be able to volunteer at. The easiest option would have been to volunteer at a school club for an hour a week, but I wanted to do more than that. Sure, there's nothing wrong with volunteering at school, but I just felt like I wanted to work somewhere which would give me more independence and confidence.
Therefore, a while ago, I emailed an organiser at the British Heart Foundation, asking if I could volunteer at my local branch. It wasn't until a week ago when I got a reply, asking me to go to the manager of my local branch and ask her. So that was exactly what I did when I went shopping a few days ago. And amazingly, she said that she'd been needing more volunteers lately as the shop was getting really busy.
I'm actually really excited to start working - I think it will help me so much with my confidence.
Skills
For my skills section, I'm going to be making a portfolio of my writing. The whole idea of this section is to build new skills - obviously - and to be able to apply these skills to life. Even though I've been writing for a long time, I'm going to use this project to build my technical knowledge of fiction and how to write stories.
I've asked my English teacher to asses the section and check over my work and he seemed really keen to do it, so - like the volunteering section - I'm really looking forward to doing it.
Physical
For my physical section, I will be going to my local gym and, obviously, doing fitness. Surprisingly, I'm actually looking forward to doing this (let's see how long that lasts) because I think it'll be a good experience. I've already got my membership sorted and I'm going to be going with one of my friends. We're still not entirely sure about when we're starting but we've got to do an induction before we start properly. This is something which I can continue doing, even after I've finished DofE, and it's also something which can be the centre of many blog posts to come.
I really think this award is a great opportunity for anybody, especially if you want to go to a really good college or university. Not only does it make your CV look better, it also has the potential to build your confidence and allows you to give yourself experience in the real world, outside of school.
If you're interested in doing the award, you can click here to go to the website.
You could also ask someone at your school if they're planning to provide you with the Duke of Edinburgh award, as some schools are DofE centres and help you organise it.
I hope that you found this post helpful and I'm sorry if you're in anther country and don't have access to it.
Thanks for reading,
Elsie A xx
