I completed the Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award, and it's an excellent extracurricular activity to have on your CV. You can take the bronze award followed by the silver and gold ones, which are harder and require more devotion and perseverance. I completed the bronze award years ago whilst I did my GCSEs.

There are four sections of the award:

- Expedition
- Skill
- Service
- Physical Recreation

For the expedition, I went on a trek in unfamiliar territory and had to guide to a campsite with a map, compass and other equipment. We had to carry all our gear with us in camping bags such as our sleeping mats, sleeping bags, food and other equipment. The trek was quite long and lasted two days (over night). It was a challenge at times navigating to the various checkpoints and we got lost at points or ended up walking through painful fields but it was lots of fun too in a group!

For the skill, I put together and painted a model car (Subaru Impreza) from a kit. You can do loads of things from egg painting to bee keeping, billiards, bird watching, amateur radio, basket making, knitting, kite, languages, dogs, darts, reptiles, religion, leatherwork and so much more - a very random mix. For the service, I worked in Oxfam on a voluntary basis but you can also do things such as animal welfare, childcare, coastguard, lifeboat, marine society and sea cadets and youth work. For the physical recreation part, I did cross country at my school as I was part of the team too.

The award requires dedication, organisation and perseverance. You need to devote yourself to doing a service every now and then and keeping up with your skill and physical work. You also need to get through the somewhat challenging expedition. You can go by foot, cycle, canoe or horse in the gold award but not all these options are available in the bronze award. The later awards are harder as you need to do each section for a longer and more intense period of time and the expedition is a lot more tough - even in another country with extreme conditions such as a dessert or rainforest for the gold award. It's well-worth doing as it's highly recognised and respected and is an excellent addition to any CV.

Thanks for reading,

Dan ©