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Going For Gold at Buckingham Palace
26th May 2022
Wakefield Girls Molly, Izzy, Abigail, Olivia, Romy, Catherine and Abbey were special guests in the Buckingham Palace garden for a very special festival-style celebration – the first Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award events since the pandemic.
The Gold DofE programme is a demanding, non-competitive personal challenge, open to all young people, which takes a minimum of 12 months to complete. Young people build their own programmes with activities in five sections – Physical, Skills, Volunteering, a five-day Residential and a four-day expedition.
Mr Carlin, who leads the Duke of Edinburgh program at Wakefield Girls’ commented: “It is so fantastic to see our successful Gold Award achievers finally receiving their well deserved awards at the Buckingham Palace awards ceremony. This is the culmination of several years of hard work and determination, through Bronze, Silver and Gold. The ceremonies are an excellent opportunity for the participants and their families to celebrate and receive acknowledgement of their dedication, not only to the award scheme and their own personal development, but also to the wider community.”
The Earl of Wessex hosted the event in his role as Trustee for The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. The celebrations recognised young people who did their demanding Gold DofE programmes both before and during the COVID pandemic – showing extraordinary creativity, resilience and determination to achieve their Awards while navigating unprecedented challenges and restrictions.
Ruth Marvel, DofE CEO, said: “Achieving a Gold DofE Award is a remarkable achievement at any time – but over the last two years young people have overcome extraordinary challenges to achieve theirs. I’m delighted we’re finally able to give them the celebration they deserve and recognise the amazing passion, resilience, and creativity they’ve shown. Young people were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic, losing out on education and social development, experiencing unprecedented levels of mental ill-health and now a cost of-living crisis – but, as today’s attendees show, they have the potential to achieve amazing things given the chance. We owe it to all young people to give them access to opportunities like the DofE, which can help them build their confidence, resilience and skills so they’re ready for anything.”
Thank you to Mrs Brooke and Ms Jackson for sharing their photographs.
