Silver lining: my DofE journey as a young carer

Hi, my name is Laylun. I’m 16 and’ll be writing a blog about my experiences with Duke of Edinburgh (DofE). I have decided to take on silver because I had such an amazing experience doing my bronze, I made so many new and special memories and I feel like I picked up a lot of important life skills and new experiences like camping, pitching a tent, map reading and of course hiking

I’d like to think I’m also a fan of new experiences and challenges, and it’s how I’ve always viewed the DofE; like my next big challenge to accomplish, I take pride in pushing myself

also, what’s the worst that can happen? My DofE instructor has already made it his personal goal for my silver experience to top my bronze, so we both have our own personal goals to work towards; in my opinion, I don’t think bronze could be topped for me, but I’m willing to be proved wrong. 

I feel like my silver DofE experience is a little different than most; unlike my bronze, which I did with my school, I’m now doing my silver with Nexus Fostering, a fostering agency my mum works for. This has already made things slightly different; in a practical sense, it is very difficult. I’ll only get to meet up with my group once before the actual expedition, as we’re quite literally scattered all around the UK.

I learnt just how important team chemistry is in my bronze DofE. We faced a lot of difficult situations that we wouldn’t have been able to make it out of without working as a team.

Staying positive is important, for example, walking down a country road for an entire hour in 30-degree heat, just to find out we took the wrong turn. I won’t lie; moments like this did really give me doubts, but we got through it as a team, and now it is something we look back on and laugh at. This kind of team spirit will be harder to achieve now; I mean, at the time of writing this, I still haven’t met my group, but I still have faith. There’s no need to stress, though. I believe this will only motivate us more to socialise and build chemistry quickly. We’re all facing the same challenge, a bit like a shared experience, not only just being involved in fostering, but of course, we all did bronze, too, we understand the struggles and rewards of camping, hiking for hours and trying to read a map, (admittedly my map reading skills did end up with my group in a horse enclosure) these sort of experiences we all went through will bring us closer together.

Another thing that adds to the strange experience is having a pretty full household with a lot of specific arrangements. This is something which required a lot of adjustments and compromises; even after almost 4 years of having foster siblings, it’s still something which, as a family, we’re getting used to.

I love contributing and helping out with fostering; in a way, I see myself as a young carer; it’s another responsibility I have to face; balancing it all isn’t easy, but I do feel such a great sense of reward with both DofE and being a young carer.

It causes clashes quite often, and the DofE Is no exception; having to juggle so many things like exams, busy households, fostering responsibilities, hobbies and also anything DofE-related is a big task, but like I said before, I like new challenges. Not to mention, it’s an important life skill to be able to fit all these things into a schedule and work around several different issues. I think that’s where DofE shines the most; it teaches so many important life skills, but more on that later. 

One of the fundamentals of DofE is the requirement to complete a skill, volunteer, and physical. For bronze, you do two of these for 3 months and one of them for 6. Now I’m onto silver, where the requirements are slightly stricter but not too bad. Now, I have to do 2 of the sections for 6 months and the other for 3. The skill I chose for silver is baking/cooking. There is a small catch where you can do the same thing that you did for bronze, but there has to be an additional challenge to it, so I decided to do cooking alongside baking; in contrast, for bronze, I just baked. I think one of the good things about DofE is that these 3 requirements don’t feel like extra tasks; you can base them around your interests and hobbies. I’ve always loved baking, and DofE acted as a way to further develop my ability and enjoyment of baking. 

I also enjoy the addition of cooking this time; being a young carer, I always like to look for ways to help out, and cooking meals is a great way to do that.

I can help out my family and work towards my DofE requirements; it does go hand in hand with your daily life, which is one of the best bits about the three requirements. Cooking is also an important life skill and a great way to become independent. 

For my physical I’m doing football which seems to be a popular choice for people when deciding what to do for physical. It was a very easy choice, there are some weeks when I’ll have football 4 times a week, which does get exhausting. I didn’t really have to adjust my schedule at all; I’ve always loved playing football, and once again, these requirements really don’t need to be a drag as you can base them around yourself. You don’t even need to play for a club or have set training sessions, and it can be as simple as doing sports in your gardens. I personally enjoy team sports, and I found a lot of parallels to being on a football team and doing DofE, both of which need leadership, encouragement and resilience. I certainly needed to know that when trying to map ready or put together a tent, the three requirements aren’t just there for the fun of it; they will contribute to the expedition. 

Funnily enough, my volunteering is writing this blog, (4th wall break :0) I saw it as a great opportunity to share my experiences on something I'm passionate about along with completing the young leader's program, which I'd recommend if you were looking to be further involved with DofE or even if it's just something extra you want on your CV, either way it'll definitely be beneficial in the long run. Writing this blog is the perfect example of how creative you can get!