National Youth Achievement Award was given the opportunity to try enrolling 90 Grade 9 students directly into the Silver-level Award, skipping the Bronze. Read about the Silver Award expedition below, visit the NYAA website for more information, and eDunia for more stories and slideshows. www.uwcsea.edu.sg/nyaa 1
Reference: www.dofe.org
NYAA Silver Expedition By Aditya Krishnan (Team Yellow) Adapted from an article by Aditya Krishnan, Silver Award candidate The National Youth Achievement Award (NYAA) aims to advance youths’ “personal qualities of selfreliance, perseverance and a sense of responsibility to themselves, the society and the nation.” It is run in accordance with the Duke of Edinburgh Award (UK) requirements, which was established through the vision of Kurt Hahn. The original award structure has remained virtually unchanged since its inception in the 1950s and, in line with UWC principles, adopts the ideas no competition and no membership requirements in order to make it accessible to all.1 To receive the award, students need to complete commitments to four key components, being undertaking service, learning or honing a skill, an adventurous journey and undertaking physical recreation for a certain number of hours over a period of time. The amount of commitment required varies, depending on the level of the award— bronze, silver or gold. The fantastic thing about this award is that most UWCSEA students already fulfil their requirements simply by participating in life at the College. Although all of the requirements are generally enjoyable, the real adventure that students look forward to is the NYAA expedition. This year, UWCSEA 18
All the expeditions I have been on have started off with me getting on a bus, a train or an aeroplane. But this specific expedition started off two months before the actual trip, because unlike the previous excursions where we would be given food, water and shelter organised by the school, we had to take care of ourselves from the moment we walked into immigration in Singapore to the moment we raced out of customs, back home. The entire expedition was pre-planned; we had to plan what we would be doing and where we would be at every point each day. All the participants had received their Bronze Awards just a few months ago in June, and so we were still extremely motivated to complete the five-day hike at the Sai Kung East Country Park in Hong Kong to fulfill the NYAA Silver Award. It aimed for each individual to achieve a balance between independence and teamwork; each team was fending for themselves and would not let any member fall behind. It was the day after this that proved to be most challenging; even as the physical trek was probably equal to what we had done the day before, we hit a lot of walls on the way. We had crossed mountains, valleys and beaches, and finished the off-road trail at a dam with views that looked like computer generated scenery … The walk that would test the bonds between us was
a straight, flat, paved road with no prospect of getting lost. We could see all the way to the end of the journey, and it was a long way to go in the blistering heat with the closest drinking water being a box of bottled water at the other end. We were halfway through the walk when our group came to the point of making it or breaking— a straight road visible ahead and behind us, a mountain to our left and the reservoir to our right. And it was the strength of the group, the mutual thinking that kept it together. Instead of imploding, we all took a second to reflect and say to ourselves that this was the point where we all had to put aside humiliation or embarrassment, and go on together.