Congratulations from Germany

Roots of the Award go back to Salem School at Lake Constance, which was founded in 1920 by Kurt Hahn and where in some sense everything begun. So we in Germany have a special reason to be very happy about the “50th anniversary” of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the impressive work it did over this long time.

Roots of the Award go back to Salem School at Lake Constance, which was founded in 1920 by Kurt Hahn and where in some sense everything begun. So we in Germany have a special reason to be very happy about the “50th anniversary of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the impressive work it did over this long time. I think Kurt Hahn would be very happy and proud too…

As it happens “A prophet has no honour in his own country” and it took Germany till 1994 to actually start the Award. Like Kurt Hahn helped in the United Kingdom some 40 years before, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award now assisted us Germans to do our first steps. Mike Mumford and his “Award Lodge” in Bavaria supported on a daily base, Shirley Price run the first Leaders Course, Michael Hobbs, then UK’s Award director, overtook sponsoship in its name when the German Award was founded, Christiane Schlichting assisted training the trainers and Prince Edward presented the first Gold Award.

Today, from the Mission Statement to the work we are doing to ensure quality at all levels, a lot of things are the same or at least rather similar in both countries. With the help of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award we even trained our first Wild Country Assessors in Northern Ireland and adopted this system to Germany; there are even two joint areas in Bavaria, where back to 1994 the first British – German Gold Expedition venture happened, and Scotland.

Of course, if we compare figures, the Award in German with altogether some 100 units and 1000 participants is still rather weak. But without the UK’s support we even would not have managed this and we are very confident, that with these sound foundations there is a lot more to come. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Klaus Vogel
>National Co-ordinator<br>Das Internationale Jugendprogramm