Working towards your Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold, and Queen Scout Awards requires a significant amount of perseverance and determination. However in midst of an uncertain year, which has so far seen face-to-face Scouting suspended a number of times, you would need to be more dedicated than usual. Lenny has been doing just that, and has been volunteering in his local community to continue to work towards his goal of achieving his DofE Gold, and Queen Scout Awards.
Hi my name is Lenny. I have been involved in scouting since the age of six and have had a plethora of great experiences. I am currently working towards achieving the Gold Duke of Edinburgh award as well as the Queens Scout Award. This was going very well but like everything was made tricky due to the pandemic.
However luckily I was able to carry on with the volunteering section from my DofE award as the community centre in my local area had started cooking meals for elderly and vulnerable people who live locally. Many of them were shielding so couldn’t leave their house to collect the meals, this is where my role came in. Every weekday from March 2020 until the end of August 2020 I delivered these meals.
I had to turn up punctually at 11.45 to collect them and then walk to a couple of streets that were a few minutes away. I would then work my way down the street giving the meals out often having a chat with the people, they were grateful for this a lot of them were not going out and having little social contact so we were helping their physical health by delivering a decent home cooked meal we were also supporting their mental health as well. Due to this it usually took about between an hour and a half to two hours. It also helped me and my mental health as it gave me a reason to leave the house every day. But overall it was a great experience and I really enjoyed it.
So I would urge anyone reading this to try and support something like this and volunteer as it’s very rewarding. After I had done this I then had to give a presentation to my unit which I did over zoom. There were only a few explorers there but they all seemed to be inspired to try and help out with something like this in the future.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, Lenny.