I have been involved in the Award for the past 20 years. I completed my Bronze, Silver and Gold as an Air Cadet in the UK, and immediately went on to become an Award Leader, supporting young people from all over the country to realise their potential through their sectional activities.

Whilst doing my own Awards, I personally developed a passion for climbing through my Physical Recreation section, undertook a flying scholarship for my Gold Residential Project and spent more hours in the pouring rain on various expeditions in the Brecon Beacons and Dartmoor than I care to remember! Since then, I have had the pleasure of supervising and assessing hundreds of participants on their Adventurous Journeys in places such as Norway, South Africa, Morocco, Swaziland, Germany and Nepal.

I worked as the National Award Development Manager for the Army Cadet Force, supporting 10,000 participants through their Awards and I have also been fortunate enough to work for both the Award in the UK and The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award. Here I worked with at risk and marginalised young people, running the Award within prisons to reduce the risk of offending in prisoners’ children, developing and running a Young Leaders Programme to support the next generation of Award Leaders, as well as looking after Independent Award Centres all over the globe. Seeing the passion and tenacity of today’s young people to complete their Awards is the same as I felt when undertaking mine, the reason HRH The Duke of Edinburgh devised the idea for the Awards with Kurt Hahn and Lord Hunt, and the overarching reason why I am still involved as both an employee and a volunteer to this day.