My Experience on the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Bronze Award Expedition

My friends and I before we set off for our expedition - we look happy and excited and we were!


Hi this is my first ever blog and as a novice I am sure I will make some mistakes.  However, I really hope that people aged 13 - 25 who read this will have some patience with me, as I believe the contents of this post can provide some insight into the value of a Duke of Edinburgh Award for them.

I am required to write this blog or have some form of presentation of the experiences I had on the expedition element of the DofE Awards so it is written for this specific purpose, however despite the mandatory need for the report I can confirm that the expedition though tough was a very exciting time for me and taught me many new skills.

I am a student at Kantor King Solomon High School and have always been fascinated by the awards as my father had participated on the DofE awards previously.

Whilst I was at an award ceremony for the Yoni Jesner Awards, I had learnt about an opportunity for me to finally get involved in the programme at my school through a group called the Jewish Girls and Lads Brigade.  Though I am a Pakistani Christian the group had no faith restrictions and I immediately applied.

To begin with I continued volunteering for the British Pakistani Christian Association.  Through them I attended a conference at the EU Parliament, met the Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK, Spoke at Westminster Cathedral and handed flowers at a solidarity event after a bomb attack and helped grow their database of members - to name but a few of the wonderful experiences. 

I also asked my football coach at Colebrook Royals if he would be willing to act as an assessor for the physical element of my award and he agreed and he kindly plotted my progress in training and as a team member of our Sunday league team.

At the same time I also began a work-experience post at A.A. Security, where I undertook various administration roles, including: scheduling security officers, taking calls, database management and telemarketing.  Through hard endeavour I managed to complete all of these elements before the date of what I knew would be a gruelling two-day expedition.


I knew the two-day expedition was going to be tough as my assigned group 'K02' had already taken part in a shorter expedition in a place called  Potters Bar in Hertfordshire.  We struggled with the map-reading meaning we walked further than any of the other participants and when I got home my muscles ached for three days.  The pain was compounded as I suffer with juvenile arthritis and my joints had taken a bit of a hammering.  To my chagrin the boys refused to listen to me at the practice expedition and often I knew the correct route to take for the journey.

 We completed the course and look shattered.

 Our smiles hide the fact that we were physically shattered.

I needed a Lucozade after the expedition.



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