Duke of Edinburgh's Award Events
The Club already runs navigation training courses which provide training in all the navigation skills necessary for Duke of Edinburgh's Award expeditions up to Gold level. The Club hopes to further develop activities aimed at Gold DofE participants in three areas:
- Enhancing the existing navigation training course for young people by adding an optional day to cover all the Gold Expedition Training Framework syllabus.
- Offering a 5-day outdoor activity based Gold residential. Please note that it is a requirement of the Residential Section that participants to do not know each other beforehand. Therefore groups of friends or members of the same BB Company will not be able to do residentials together.
- Organising Gold practice and qualifying expeditions including acclimitisation, route planning and making a presentation.
The Club has decided to focus on Gold, because Gold expeditions must be organised in wild country and partipants must be trained to safely undertake expeditions in these terrains. Many BB Companies and& schools do not have leaders with the qualifications and skills to deliver training or supervise expeditions in wild country which means that many participants who have completed Bronze and Silver are often unable to progress to Gold. The BBMC does however have Leaders with all the the required qualifications and skills as well as posessing a good knowledge of many wild country areas.
Another reason for focussing on Gold is that BB members are often unable to complete or sometimes even start their Gold DofE Awards before they reach the BB's upper age limit and many go away to university, lose contact with the BB and never complete Gold. By offering DofE activities in the university vacations, it will be possible for ex-BB members, who could not complete Gold while members of the Brigade, to do so with the BBMC.
Another group of people who may be interested are young BB officers, who may or may not have completed other levels of the Award Scheme. Serving as a BB Officer will count towards the Volunteering Section of the Scheme. Gold awards will take a minimum of 12 months to complete for those who have completed Silver awards and a minimum of 18 months for direct entrants to Gold. All levels of the Award Scheme must be completed before the participant's 25th birthday.
For members of Companies that are registered as DofE Centres, we would recommend that administration of the participants is done by the Company's DofE Centre, but the BBMC is registered as a DofE Centre and can administer participants who are not members of Companies or whose Companies are not registered as DofE Centres.
More information about DofE in the BBMC can be obtained from the Freqently Asked Questions about DofE page.
Some of the Club's Leaders have trained to be accredited expedition assessors and may be available to assess expeditions supervised by BB Companies and Battalions.
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