Duke of Edinburgh Award at PMH

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The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award is a self-development program that encourages young people to take initiative, build skills and discipline for the future while engaging in a fun and social environment.

It is composed of four main parts; learning a skill, participating in physical activity, volunteering for the community and completing an adventurous journey. Each activity helps the participant both to better define their goals in a specific and reasonable manner through the SMART framework, but also to achieve them from through each activity while giving them real-world experience that can supplement learning done in the classroom.

One of the main parts of the Duke of Edinburgh is continued application towards an end goal. Time management and organisation are learnt as the participant completes each of their logs for an hour per week for 3 or 6 months, while also making time for the preparation and training for their Adventurous Journey. When getting set up for their logs, the participant must also leverage their networking and negotiating skills to be able to find someone to be their assessor, who will teach them about that specific activity that they are doing, and guide them towards their goals later on.

The other main part of the Duke of Edinburgh is the Adventurous Journey. The participants push themselves and their peers to their physical and mental limits, whilst also socialising in a shared experience.

Currently, at Parramatta Marist, there are multiple groups of students doing their Duke of Edinburgh. The largest group is that of current year 10 students that are in the process of finalising their Bronze Award. Late last year they completed their Practice Adventurous Journey where they grew closer as a group, tested their physical and mental strength and also. Here are some things that they had to say:

It has allowed me to learn things that I wouldn’t do in a normal school.
- Matthias Barrett

It is good, and helps to develop mateship and strong bonds within the group while placing us in an environment where we must rely on each other’s skills to succeed.
- Alec Jorquera

Of the year 10 group, a small number of students have moved onto the Silver Award, which follows the same structure as the Bronze Award, but becomes harder as the time commitments increase. They have started getting their Skill, Service and Physical Recreation completed, and later on in the year when restrictions allow, will be able to undertake their Silver Adventurous Journey.

Brendan Pospischil