The Duke of Edinburgh award is an excellent experience for young people which teaches them important life skills alongside being extremely fun. The award teaches people teamwork, hard work and resilience, not only in the expedition part, but also in the physical, volunteering and skills sections. The skills section allows people to learn new skills such as cooking, baking, writing and many others. In my case, I am a part of the newspaper club, which is an amazing experience and once again, encourages teamwork specially to achieve a common goal of putting out a newsletter every month. The physical section helps people to get fit and learn how to play new sports. Lastly, the volunteering section enable you to gain skills which would look great on my CV, and I am confident that having that previous key experience from volunteering would contribute to a successful job in the future.

Coming into the expedition section I was nervous on what to expect, especially holding these massive backpacks, but after meeting my team at the train station, I was relieved to see everyone prepared and ready to go. We all started at Lenham station and worked our way through beautiful views, thorn bushes, huge fields, roads and even animal waste up to the campsite which we arrived at about 8 hours and 36km later. We set up camp at Dunn Street Farm and immediately began to cook food and naturally, have to fend off any others trying to snatch some of our food. However, I have to admit that this was my favourite part of the expedition. On the second day of the expedition, we were expected to make it back to the station on our own, different to the first day where we were accompanied by a teacher. Luckily, we didn’t get lost and made it to the station by about 1:30pm where we were greeted by our teachers who debriefed us and let us go. Overall, the DofE award was a fun and special experience which I encourage all younger and older years to try to get involved in.

- By Ifeanyi, Year 10

Here are some pictures from various expeditions: