What is the award?

The Duke of Edinburgh's Award has three levels:
Bronze, Silver and Gold
All Awards must be finished by your 25th Birthday, and you must start an award before your 23rd Birthday.

Bronze: For people aged 14 and over. This can often be done in under a year.

Silver: For those aged 15 and over. Takes about 18-24 months for direct entrants, less if you have bronze.

Gold: For those over 16. Usually takes at least 2 years to complete.

You can start any award at anytime up to your 23rd Birthday as long as you are over the minimum ages given above.
In the Society most people are doing Gold but you can do any of the three awards. Each award takes longer to do if you do not have the previous award, but you do not have to have Bronze to do Silver or Bronze or Silver to do Gold.

Each Award consists of four sections: Service, Skill, Physical Recreation and Expedition.

For Gold, there is an additional section called a residential project. Here is a brief summary of each section: for more information click on the section heading.

Service:
To encourage Service to individuals and to the community. There are three options:

Group 1: Service with a substantial element of practical involvement, e.g. voluntary work with children, the elderly, people with special needs, the environment.
Group 2: Service requiring specialized training, e.g. animal welfare, the emergency services, award scheme leadership, youth work, service through religious education.
Group 3: Service leading to a specific qualification, e.g. First Aid or lifesaving, Expedition and Mountain Leadership, youth leadership with uniformed organizations.

Skill:
This involves taking up a new skill or improving an existing one, e.g. playing a musical instrument, art, collections, model construction and almost any kind of hobby.

Physical Recreation:
This involves participating in some kind of physical recreation such as team sports, dance, cycling, martial arts, sub aqua, bowling and many others. You have to either take up a new activity or show improvement in an existing one.

Expedition:
This is the part that the Society provides the most help with. For this section of the award you have to complete a challenging expedition, being completely self-sufficient for the duration. You can complete the expedition in a variety of ways such as walking, cycling, horse riding, canoeing etc. Walking is the most common. For Gold you have to complete a four day expedition covering a total of 50 miles on foot (170 miles by cycle) spending the three nights camping. You have to carry all you food and camping equipment and navigate using map and compass etc. The society will give you training in navigation and camp craft so don't worry if you've never done it before!

Residential Project:
This section is required at Gold level only. This section involves spending a week on a residential course with people you do not know, working on some kind of purposeful enterprise. This can include music or drama courses, conservation weekends, restoration projects and various others. Opportunities are advertised in Award Journal, the magazine of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, of which we have copies. Another easy way to find conservation holidays to to search on-line for conservation groups such as BTCV, or almost any other groups.

For more information visit the official award website