DUKE OF EDINBURGHS AWARD We don't need to tell anyone how different or difficult this year has been. Undeterred, the Eccles RFC DofE section has tried, when possible to continue with our activities and assist participants who were aiming to complete their goals. A few young people, who had luckily already atttained other sections of their award, were on their last stage needing only to complete an expedition. With the guidance of the North West DofE and working within government guidelines we were able to successfully carry out alternative expeditions over two weekends for the Bronze groups. The young people achieved everything they would normally do - map reading, walking, cooking, field crafts. The only thing they didn't do was camping out over night, instead sleeping at home and returning to carry on the next day. We intended to do the same for the Silver group during October but unfortunately the Greater Manchester area went into tighter lockdown restrictions so this has been postponed until a future date. Eccles RFC was the first rugby club in the UK to run the prestigious DofE award programme and we now have a decade of experience behind us. In this time we’ve seen 48 of our young people achieve the highest accolade of a gold award at a Royal Palace and over 160 more achieve Silver and Bronze recognition. However, in recent years we have seen diminishing numbers of our young people wanting to take up the challenge of a DofE award at Eccles RFC. There is no doubt that the programme requires determination, dedication and a commitment in effort and time to succeed. We encourage participation from our players, as the benefits to personal development and team bonding are clear, but we respect it is not for everyone. We hope, when some kind or normality returns, we will be be able to recruit and do more to keep the DofE going at Eccles. This is not the way we wanted to celebrate our tenth year, but lots of organisations are in the same boat and we will endeavour, as many pioneers and expeditioners have done before, to continue and overcome the difficulties before us. First Gold Group At St James Palace 2nd Gold Group At Buckingham Palace 3rd Group At Buckingham Palace 4th Group At Buckingham Palace
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