Opportunity Achievement Success Progression
Worthing College students strike Gold at Duke of Edinburgh Awards Below is a piece written by our latest Gold Achiever Ben Wright who has just received his Award at St. James’ Palace. “The Gold part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award felt like such an achievement and only really hit me on entering St. James’ Palace. To be only 1 of about 20 others in the south east region, for my time slot, vastly up-scaled the experience as a whole. I started from the Bronze at School and worked my way up, but I think by completing one level it made me want to go on to complete the whole lot. Overall visiting the palace was by far the highlight of the award. We were introduced into the rooms and eventually got into the room where HRH Prince Edward would talk to our group for about 4 minutes. Sir Richard Stilgoe was our guest and it was so strange to talk to these sorts of people at once. Towards the end of the presentation we got called up individually to receive our certificates from Sir Richard Stilgoe. Completing the Gold award is one of the best things I have achieved so far and all you really need is a determined attitude and hey presto you have an award which puts you out and above other candidates when applying for jobs. If I got asked to do it again I would honestly say no, but that’s only because it will never meet my expectations of my first go. If you want to do it, try and do it whilst you have the chance because now is the best time !!”
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Ben Wright with his mother outside St James’ Palace after receiving his gold award
Ben
Wright
BSc
at
(Studying
University
of
Physics Surrey).
What Ben did not mention as a highlight in completing his Award is the day he carried his team mate’s full rucksack of kit and his own for the entire day as his team mate was so ill. By doing this it meant his team mate had recovered by the next day and was able to complete his expedition!! Other achievers at Gold Level include: Michael Chambers, Mark Austin, Peter Vale, Grace McCutchan, Nicola Hull and Sophie Hoskins and Georgina Scott. At Silver level completions include: Charlotte Frankling, Stephanie Powell, Alice Heasman, James Hawkins, Katie Tillman, Tim Emery, Amy
Bea Dighe, Louise Maloney, Laura Muchmore, Florence Scordouus, Sam Wall, Jason White, Callum Meeney, Ben Perrett and Kate Willis. I would like to see completions continue to increase at the college. The key to completion is to keep the online system up to date and being thoroughly committed to getting those final reports done by your assessors. If DofE was not a huge challenge to undertake it would not be the world’s leading achievement programme for young people and rated number one in the work place….. but don’t let that put you off!! Joanna Ireland DofE Centre Co-ordinator Worthing College
www.worthing.ac.uk