Meet the family with three generations of Dofe Awards
Three women from one family tell Helen Chandler-wilde how the scheme has shaped their lives
When Prince Philip died in April, Vicky Bull was so upset that she cried. Over the years, the prince had become a fixture in her family: he had presented her mother Anne with her gold Duke of Edinburgh award in 1960, then Vicky with hers in 1998. In the years since then, Vicky met the prince several more times at award presentations for students she had led through the scheme. If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, he might have even been able to present Vicky’s daughter Eloise, 18, with her gold award, too.
“I feel like I knew him, which is ridiculous,” says Vicky, 46. “I was sad because I wanted him to make his 100th birthday.”
I meet the three women in Vicky’s office at Balcarras School in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire to talk about the impact that the Duke of Edinburgh Award – which is one of the four charities supported by this year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal – has had on their lives.
The award’s presence in Vicky’s life is clear: one end of her office is full of dozens of rucksacks and camping stoves, ready to be used for the next group of children she takes out on expedition.
The family is one of the few in the country in which three generations have taken the Duke of Edinburgh Award, now also known as “Dofe”. It is a particularly rare feat for three generations of women to have done this: girls were only allowed to start taking a form of the award in 1958, with full certificates first issued to them in 1965.
The family’s story follows the evolution of the scheme through time. Today, it asks young people to volunteer, do physical exercise, practise a hobby, go on an expedition; and, to achieve the gold award, to complete a residential course. But when Anne enrolled onto the girls’ scheme, there was a further category called “design for living”, where candidates had to demonstrate expertise in first aid, homemaking and “grooming and poise”.
Anne, now 79, flicks through her pale grey record book, where details of her award are noted. In cursive handwriting, an assessor has written that her “personal hygiene” is “satisfactory in every respect”.
And while girls had more challenges to complete to achieve the award, they did have one advantage over the boys. On the expeditions, they were allowed to forgo camping for a slightly more civilised overnight stay. “In those days, the girls were allowed to use hostels,” laughs Anne.
She clearly remembers the day that she went with her father to collect her award from Prince Philip. “We got into a taxi and he said: ‘Buckingham Palace, please’,” she recalls, smiling. The presentation was in the throne room of the palace, where she was introduced to the prince, who would have been 39 at the time. Meeting him was so “overwhelming”, she can’t remember what exactly he said to her.
Anne’s award consisted of singing, dressmaking, volunteering with elderly people, an expedition to walk the Pilgrim’s Way in Kent, and a residential francophone stay. She recalls that the experience gave her greater confidence and a sense of independence, as well as teaching her the importance of perseverance.
Vicky inherited her mother’s love for the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Starting her gold when she was at sixth-form in Swindon, Wiltshire, she participated in aerobics, piano-playing and volunteering in a nursery, with an expedition in Scotland.
She collected her award from Prince Philip, in a ceremony at St James’s Palace. She took her father with her, reasoning that her mother Anne had already met the prince when she collected her own award, and describes the experience as “surreal” and “really magical”. She thought that the Duke was “such a great guy”, who cracked a few risqué jokes, as well as delivering an invigorating speech to the young people.
Her experience with the award had a great influence on the direction that her life went in. After “just loving” her time volunteering in a nursery, she decided that she wanted to be a teacher. After training, she got a job in the geography department at Balcarras School.
She pushed for the school to offer the scheme, and around the year 2000 took the first cohort of her own pupils on their expeditions.
In the years since, the characterbuilding scheme has gone from strength to strength, with her school now taking on more than 100 pupils a year. She says she sees first-hand how much confidence and independence the award can promote in young people. “Some of them have never been to a supermarket to buy their own dinner,” she says. After the transformation of weekend expeditions, she says that often “on Monday, that child is different than how they were on Friday”.
“[Those are] the moments that make it count. When a child thinks ‘I can’t’, and then a few minutes later, hours later, or even a week later, they think: ‘I can – and I’ve done it.’”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Vicky’s 18-year-old daughter Eloise has also been through the scheme. After completing her bronze award, she started working towards the gold last year. The award has once again kept evolving to keep up with the times. While her mother and grandmother kept track of their achievements in paper record books, Eloise simply logs her efforts online.
Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, she was not able to go on the expedition and complete the award before she finished school. Instead, she received an official “certificate of achievement”, a document introduced during the pandemic to show that young people had done as much as they could under the circumstances.
Eloise says the award offered a helpful distraction during the pandemic, especially the home fitness workouts that she did for her physical requirements. It was also helpful in securing her a place on a competitive business apprenticeship. “[In the interviews] a lot of questions were like: ‘Give me an example of where you’ve been a good communicator, or give me a good example of where you’ve worked well in the team’,” she says. “And I could say: ‘I’ve been a really good communicator on my Dofe expedition – I made sure the team didn’t get lost.’”
The family thinks that had the award been founded even earlier, Anne’s mother Margaret would have been a keen candidate too. Margaret, who died in 2003, climbed the Matterhorn in the 1930s, and would always “eulogise over how amazing it was to get out in the fresh air”, says Vicky. She had an adventurous spirit and encouraged the family to “never say no to opportunities”. Her attitude laid the foundation for generations of women on the scheme, says Vicky.
“The philosophy was: ‘You get out and give it a go.’”