I recently attended the Palace to celebrate the completion of my Gold DofE award and it’s been a really good time to reflect on what the award has meant to me and to try to use my experience to encourage others to give it a go.
The first 3 sections of the award are Volunteering, Physical and Skills, and you get to choose which one you do for 6 rather than 12 months (a big bonus if one of them is a little scary or not your thing). Given this is for a Scouting audience, the volunteering section should be a piece of cake – getting stuck in and giving back to a local Group. You can also pair DofE really well with the Young Leader programme (something for both young people and leaders to check out if you don’t know much about the actual award part). My skills and physical sections weren’t quite normal because of Covid, but what I can say is that they give you an opportunity to push yourself to try and commit to something new for a little while (or show off something you’re already doing in which case it’s even easier!).
The next part, which runs alongside the other elements, is the expedition. That’s where all my time in Scouting really came into play. Taking all those skills that had (or I at least hoped had) been built up through Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Explorers and culminating them into this unique, exciting yet incredibly challenging weekend is absolutely difficult, but looking back I couldn’t have been more proud of myself.
Lastly, the section which for me was the most meaningful was the residential. There is a preconception that all DofE residential experiences are expensive or that you have to go far away and my experience wasn’t like that at all. One of the DofE leaders recommended volunteering at a holiday camp for children with disabilities – and I had the most incredible week. Those children and the people I met are responsible for providing me with skills and an outlook I can utilise in my future career. That’s not to say it wasn’t hard going somewhere new where I didn’t know anybody, but you don’t get an award for not challenging yourself at all!
My final takeaway would be for anyone under 25 to give it a go – so whether you’re fresh into Explorers or a little older in Network, new to DofE or you’ve never got around to submitting the last few bits of your award – it’s never too late to get stuck in.
I cannot thank the Merseyside Scouts DofE team enough. They always had my back and supported me throughout the whole DofE process.
