Plan your activity - The Duke of Edinburgh's Award

Develop yourself as a personality!

Dream big and choose activities that really interest you and that you may never have dared to do before. Now or never!

In each of the programme’s parts – Service, Fitness and Talent – you choose an activity. For each activity, you set a smart goal and challenge yourself to achieve it. You do each activity for one hour a week. Our eLogbook (Online Record Book) helps you set a smart goal.

Below you will find information about activities you could choose for each part of the program. They are only examples, you can of course choose completely different activities as long as they fit into one of the areas.

Service

The section service is simple: it is about doing something good for others without being paid for it: for a special person, for your school, your community, society, the environment or for animals.

You can get involved with a charitable organisation, e.g. the food bank or help the homeless, you can go shopping for elderly people or take their dog for a walk. You can also help younger children with their homework or reading at your school or youth centre. You might enjoy volunteering to coach younger children in a sports club or be a referee. Being a class representative also counts as service.

Would you like to get involved in climate and nature protection? The following website can help you: GoNature

Talent

The talent section is about dreaming big. Is there something you have always wanted to do? Then choose that as an activity in the talent section, even if you don’t think you can do it. The Award Programme motto is not for no reason: You can do more than you think!

The talents part of the program includes all activities that are not sports-related. You can learn to play the piano or another instrument or to sing. You can take photographs, make sculptures or carpenters, cook, bake, make pottery, sew, knit, draw, paint, design, garden, study astronomy, keep bees, make honey, fish or learn card games. Making films, editing videos, learning a language, reading, writing, presenting, and developing a website are other good options for the talent section.

Fitness

In the fitness section you can choose any kind of sport, including dancing and fitness sports. In summary, anything that requires physical exertion counts.

The possibilities are endless: Ball sports, dancing, athletics, water sports, martial arts, field sports, yoga, skateboarding …

In any case, it is important that you do the sporting activity for at least one hour a week and that you improve from week to week. Possible goals could be to score a certain number of goals with your left foot, to jog a certain distance or to perform a certain yoga posture.

Expedition

The Expeditions part of the program differs from the other parts. Here, the aim is to independently plan and carry out an unaccompanied expedition in a group of 4-7 participants under a specific theme. You cannot plan the expedition on your own but will plan it together with your expedition group during your participation in the Award. Prerequisite for the expedition is the participation in expedition training and the realisation of a test expedition.

The expedition training includes navigation, bivouacking, outdoor behavior, outdoor cooking, teamwork and first aid. Before each final expedition, you will have to carry out a mock expedition as a group to prove that you have enough experience to carry out the final expedition successfully and safely. At the end of each final expedition, there will be a presentation on your chosen topic. This can be a song, poem, video or similar.

If possible, the expeditions will take place in a natural environment with little contact. The use of your mobile phones is restricted by arrangement.

Possible ways of getting around:

on foot – by bicycle – by sailing boat – by canoe or kayak – by wheelchair – on horseback.

In order to protect flora and fauna and to make the stay in nature as gentle and sustainable as possible, all expedition groups must observe a few basic rules:

Respect protected zones. Nature needs untouched zones where it can recover from human influence.

Do not leave paths. This is the only way to protect the animals’ habitat to some extent.

Take care of plants and insects.

Ecological footprint. Reduce unnecessary travel distances, especially for trial expeditions, and travel by public transport. Careful use of vehicles for supervision and assessment.

Waste avoidance and separation. Plastic-free food as far as possible, waste separation in the bivouac camp and taking it away or disposing of it properly when leaving the campsite are a must. Each campsite should be left even nicer and cleaner than it was found. All traces that could indicate the presence of the expedition group must be removed without fail.

Residential

The Gold Project is about finding your way in an unfamiliar environment and forming new relationships. For example, you could work as a teamer in a holiday camp for children, take part in a cooking or language course in another country or in an ecological project.

The Gold Project lasts 5 days and 4 nights. In exceptional cases, it is possible to do it over two consecutive weekends.

We are happy to share ideas and suggestions from other countries with you – just write to us!

At this point, we would like to point out special possibilities (all information without guarantee):

Example of working on an organic farm:

“… I have now spent nine days at Domaine Geissberg in Biederthal, living in the volunteers’ shared flat. What happened during this week? To put it in a nutshell: A lot. After arriving in Basel, I set off on my bike. During the 20 kilometers, I sweated, breathed in particulate matter, bought biscuits de poire at a magasin, got lost and finally arrived. Every morning, I went at 7 a.m. to the goat shed for milking and went out to the pasture: “Allez les chèvres!” After breakfast, I fetched and polished eggs and stocked the self-catering fridge. I also got to help out in the fromagerie, packing cheese and curd and molding fresh cheese. In addition to these daily tasks, I threw hay bales on the tractor-trailer, put up an electric fence on an overgrown slope, helped prepare the market, threw hay and straw around with pitchforks, folded cardboard boxes and helped Charlotte in the magasin. It was exciting to go to the market in Basel on Saturday and sell cheese, where I got to know the customs station and a graduate calibrator. Thursday night we were invited to Charlotte’s house to play 7 Wonders, a board game, and had cherry pie at 1:30. If there was one thing that ran through the whole week, it was contented tiredness. I also met Stéphane and Charlotte’s two children. With them we made a campfire in the cow pasture on Saturday evening with special stick bread creations and then spent the night on an old hay cart behind the goat pen, crazy toothbrush photos included. The younger of the two had a performance at the Waldorf School yesterday, which I got to go to. Some of my fondest memories are when I was standing in the cheese dairy with two others and we were pondering what the meaning of life is for us, the clear starry sky while falling asleep and cuddling with goats. Since we spoke German in the shared flat, I only spoke French with Charlotte and Stéphane from time to time in everyday life and mainly at games night. Nevertheless, I learned new words and noticed that without any background noise, I almost always understood the meaning, even if not every single word. Since there was no lack of work to be done, I could definitely help out and feel useful. If the report is a little confused and not chronological, it is because it is not easy to pack 9 days into a few lines.
I was welcomed very warmly by all the other young people and there was a very appreciative atmosphere in the shared flat. As a result, I soon no longer felt like a stranger.
If I were to pack this week into a jam jar, it would smell of goats, hay, and fresh yeast plait, taste of Münster cheese, peach jam and crème de marron, and I would feel the claws of young billy goats on my back and a gentle goat nose on my face.” Gold participant, 2022