Duke of Edinburgh

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The Duke of Edinburgh's International Award is a program that provides, promotes and preserves a framework of Award participation that equips, engages and empowers all young people in Australia to explore their full potential. It encourages students to design their own individual program, which is tailored to meet their personal circumstances, choices and local provision. The Award inspires individuals to exceed their expectations, set challenges and goals before starting an activity and aim for these goals by showing improvement.

The Award program melds with the IB Diploma and forms a solid foundation for completing the CAS requirements, especially the Duke of Edinburgh section requirements for service, skill and activity. In addition to these sections, participants are also required to complete a practice and qualifying Adventurous Journey- a journey with a purpose.

The aim of the Adventurous Journey component is to provide participants with the opportunity to learn more about the wider environment, as well as to develop their self-confidence, team work and health. Participants are taken out of their comfort zone- in an unfamiliar environment but kept within a safe and secure setting, achieved through suitable training and supervision.

This week our Duke of Edinburgh Bronze and Silver students embarked on their Practice Adventurous Journey, facilitated by experts from Numinbah Valley Environmental Education Centre. The bronze (2 days and 1 night) and silver (3 days and 2 nights) practice journey allows our students to prepare, plan and experience skills in an unfamiliar environment to ensure their qualifying journey is safe and successful.

Below is reflection from Duke of Edinburgh participant Rhea Garg:

'The Duke of Edinburgh program has been a life-changing experience for me. The hike at Numinbah Valley has been the most physically challenging thing I've ever done. I moved to Australia a few months back, which is why I wanted to challenge myself and try new activities that would make me go out of my comfort zone, and Duke of Ed was the perfect way for me to do so. The biggest thing I personally got out of DOE was the that the idea of “fear" and “courage" is somewhat delusional. As individuals, we find ourselves comparing our lives to others constantly, which is why we doubt our abilities at each step. This leads to fear and the constant thinking of what “others might think". Through this program, I got to look inward and discovered that my potential is endless. It taught me that life would always be filled with trails and tracks which would be fun to walk on and at the same time have steep rocky hills which would be hard to climb. But after all the hard work, I still managed to go through it all. Another big thing it taught me was the fact that teamwork can truly do wonders. I had times where I was extremely physically tired, but through the constant motivation from my group members, I was able to get there.'

Our students will complete their qualifying journey in Lamington National Park in July.

Alita Lee
Deputy Principal