Duke of Edinburgh Award

The Award

The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award is the world’s leading youth achievement award, bringing together practical experiences and life skills to equip young people for life, with over eight million young participants in over 140 countries around the globe.

The international character of the award and the consistent criteria and conditions for its acquisition in any corner of the world accord the institution enormous prestige, which makes it particularly popular with universities and employers.

The program is designed for students between the ages of 14 and 24 and is an exciting personal challenge. It offers young people the opportunity to set an individual goal and achieve it. It is a balanced, non-competitive programme of voluntary activities which encourages personal discovery and growth, self-reliance, perseverance, responsibility to themselves, trust and service to their community.

The Award Framework

The Award can be completed in 3 levels, each becoming progressively more challenging.

- Bronze - for those over 14 years old, 6 months minimum participation.
- Silver - for those over 15 years old, 12 months minimum participation.
- Gold - for those over 16 years old, 18 months minimum participation.

Students must show growth in the following four areas:

Community Service - encourages young people to become an active member of their community providing a service to others.
Skill Development - encourages young people to discover new abilities and interests or improve upon existing talents.
Physical Recreation - encourages young people to get active, improve overall fitness and lead a healthy active lifestyle.
Adventurous Journey - encourages young people to cultivate a spirit of adventure, discovery, self-reliance and environmental conservation while undertaking a wilderness or adventure experience.

At Gold level, participants also complete a Residential Project.

The Award and IB CAS

Students in the IB program (Grade 11 and 12) are encouraged to take on experiences that help them to develop into fully engaged citizens of the world. The IB has enshrined this approach in the Creativity, Action, and Service (CAS) programme; the philosophy is also at the core of the Duke of Edinburgh programme. Our students participate in both.

Students work toward fulfilling the Bronze, Silver and Gold award requirements, and by so doing, are also completing requirements for the IB CAS programme.

How to achieve the Award

Despite the emphasis on self-motivation, our students are supported and mentored throughout the process. At BSS the Award is facilitated by our in-house fully trained Award Leaders who oversee and encourage the students to complete all parts of the award and progress from Bronze through to Gold.

Interested students should contact the Duke of Edinburgh Coordinator at BSS for further information.

More information about the award can be found at http://www.intaward.org