Gold in Berne

On Friday, graduating student Stephanie Kröll was presented with her Gold International Award by the British Ambassador to Switzerland James Squire. Probably the world’s most prestigious and widely recognised youth award, the International Award was founded in 1952 by educationalist Kurt Hahn and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh. It is currently offered in more than 130 countries and over 1 million young people are taking on the challenge of the Award today. Three levels are available, Bronze, Silver, and Gold, and ISL is proud to have been offering the opportunity to participate in the Award to students since 2014.

The Award is designed to leave young people ‘world ready’, and to do so it is structured around three sections: skills, service and physical recreation. The skills section is about developing an ability or interest outside of formal education, physical recreation pushes young people to commit to regular exercise, and service is about doing something of value for someone else who needs it. In addition to this there is the adventurous journey, in which students work in teams to independently complete a multi-day human powered adventure across challenging terrain.

As candidates progress through the Award, the time commit needed for each section increases. This means that, to achieve her Gold Award, Stephanie and her fellow graduating student Kiera McArthur invested a total of 286 hours into their service, skills and physical recreation sections, spent 19 days trekking and snow-shoeing through Switzerland, and organised and completed a 5-day residential project of their choosing. Quite the achievement indeed!

As well as celebrating Kiera and Stephanie’s achievement, we were also gratified that Claire Roberts’ achievement of her Silver Award was recognised in the ceremony in Berne. And, towards the beginning of their journey, we are also proud of our Year 10 students who successfully completed their Bronze adventurous journey over the weekend with an overnight hike to scale Mt. Tendre in the Jura Mountains.

If your child would like to know more about how to get involved in the Award, please do not hesitate to contact either the ASA department or me directly.

Ben Friend

International Duke of Edinburgh's Award Coordinator