The group is run 100% by volunteers, some of whom did their DofE awards many years ago! We enjoy engaging with young people and supporting them through the award process.
NBDofE was set up in the summer of 2023 in collaboration with North Berwick High School (NBHS). NBHS decided to stop offering Silver and Gold award levels so we decided to try and fill this gap.
We are a constituted voluntary group (see NBDofE group constitution). We operate under the DofE license held by East Lothian Council (ELC) and our expeditions are run to the same standards as those used by East Lothian school trips. All our leaders have been PVG checked through ELC – one has got her Gold award, the other 3 are either current or ex-teachers. ELC continue to offer us excellent support – we literally couldn’t do this without them!
Some of our groups have undertaken their expeditions through Venturing Out, a non-profit adventure company that works closely with ELC. They are a fully licensed D of E expedition provider and have many years experience working with young people in the outdoors.
We have also received financial support from the North Berwick Trust and Rotary Club of North Berwick to help with our costs of running expeditions – a huge thank you to both!
Due to the time required to manage new groups through an DofE award level (usually over a 12 month period), we have limited capacity to invite lots of new participants into our programme for 2024/25. If you are a young person that is interested (especially if you are already doing your Bronze and want to progress to Silver) or a parent/guardian of someone interested please get in touch ideally during the Spring or early Summer of each year. We can tell you what we are planning and whether we have places available.
However if adult volunteers come forward to run new sub-groups we should be able to accommodate more participants under the main NBDofE group. We can provide all the resources we have developed to run these sub-groups. Our suggestion is to create sub-groups of 7 participants (7 is the maximum number of young people per group) each with 2 adult volunteers – these are likely to be parents of participants. This model has worked well for us to date. If you are interested in being an adult volunteer please get in touch.
Our partners and funders include:
