Tom Dent from Swindon North Scouts attended a presentation at Buckingham Palace, London, where he received his Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards from celebrity adventurer and filmmaker presenter, Leon McCarron, after sharing his experience with The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE), HRH The Earl of Wessex.
During the Gold Award Presentation, HRH took the opportunity to congratulate Tom on his success and heard about his DofE journey, which took him over 12-18 months of hard work and dedication.
Those who achieve a Gold DofE Award will volunteer, learn a skill, get fit, take part in a week long residential and plan and undertake an expedition in wild country. Widely acknowledged as the world’s leading achievement award for young people, DofE programmes enable any young person, aged 14-24, to develop key skills for life and work, such as confidence, commitment and team working.
Speaking about his DofE experience, Tom, who was one of the Gold Award holders at yesterday’s presentation, said, “Undertaking the DofE Award has given me the confidence to use the skills that I have learnt within Scouting to help teach young people so that one day they can get their own DofE awards and contribute to their community.
"The award was hard work but I had a lot of fun doing it: I am most proud of my expedition, which was in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland; it was a physical challenge for me and the feeling of achievement when we reached the summits of the mountains was brilliant.”
There are currently over 300,000 young people taking part in a DofE programme across the UK through a variety of centres including both state and independent schools, special schools, businesses, prisons, young offender institutions and youth groups.
To find out more about the DofE and how it enables young people to succeed, please visit www.DofE.org
To find out more about Scouting in Swindon please visit www.swindonnorthscouts.org.uk
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