WORKING TOGETHER T
There are now well over 2,000 Licensed Organisations (LOs) delivering DofE programmes to young people across the UK. Sam Bennie offers suggestions on how these LOs can work together to help young people complete their programmes.
hese Licensed Organisations cover all four different types of LOs – National Operating Authorities (e.g. the ATC,
Boys’ Brigade etc.), Directly Licensed Centres (often schools), Operating Authorities (e.g. councils) and DofE Businesses (companies who support the DofE Charity and offer the DofE to their young staff or apprentices). Geographically they cover the whole of the UK, so you are never far away from a DofE centre. While each Licensed Organisation undoubtedly wants to be better than the next and to rightly boast about the number of young people they have supported to achieve a DofE Award, can they actually help each other in their quest?
Mutually rewarding
Every young person needs to complete activities in each of the four (or five at Gold) sections of their DofE programme. While many DofE centres and LOs will strive to provide sectional opportunities for their young people, it’s not always possible for them to do so within their remit, which leaves a young person sometimes having to look elsewhere to complete a section. Approved Activity Providers and other LOs might be able to help. For example, a young person doing their DofE in a school or a youth club might find a suitable volunteering opportunity with a local National Operating Authority centre.
DofE Magazine Issue 27: SUMMER 2017
They might be able to go and help out at one of the younger section’s meetings (such as with Rainbows through Girlguiding, or Beavers through The Scout Association). Of course, they should check whether there is a local need for volunteers (rather than assuming this will be the case). They will need to meet the organisation’s minimum standards for volunteering, for example, often being over 14 and possibly needing to undertake training. Very often the opportunity exists, which can be filled easily. Alternatively, a young person doing their DofE programme through a National Operating Authority, such as a Cadet organisation, might prefer to use their participation in their school sports team for their Physical section, rather than activities through the DofE centre where they enrolled.
A matter of choice
At the end of the day, it’s a young person’s individual choice as to what they do for each section, so
Licensed Organisations should work together to support this. This cross-Licensed Organisation working is possible and acceptable in the expedition section. Quite often a young person may not be available to do the planned expedition dates with their DofE centre and they may look elsewhere. It may be with the school that at which they are a pupil, or with a youth group they are a member of... or to an Approved Activity Provider. Providing that their school or youth group is also licensed to run the DofE, they can do their expedition with them, providing there is enough space and the DofE Leader accepts them to have been trained to a suitable standard etc.
What about eDofE?
The DofE Leader will need to comply with both organisations’ expedition notification procedures, but it is not necessary to transfer their account on eDofE. They will need to transfer them, however, if the new centre is taking on full responsibility (including insurance) for that young person and will support them through the rest of their DofE programme to completion.
If another centre is purely helping them through one section of their DofE programme, then their record should stay with their current Licensed Organisation and the Assessor’s Report uploaded to their account via
DofE.org/assessor.
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