LEAD 2013 – Leadership, Experience, Adventure and Development

2013 Gold Visioneers

2013 Gold Visioneers

 Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DEA) is one of the sixth key programs found in Vision Youth leadership training program. Since 1956, Duke of Edinburgh’s Award has been supporting adolescents aged from 14 to 24 to actively participate in activities that shape well-being. DEA is worldwide recognized as an indicator of all-round personal development. Therefore, Vision Youth encourages every Visioneer to complete the award, which is beneficial to personal development as well as CV building. In Canada, DEA was first introduced in 1963. Since then, more than 500,000 young participants joined the award in different levels.

LEAD 2013

This year is the 50^th anniversary since the DEA has been first introduced in Canada. DEA office organizes a series of events to celebrate the joy of the anniversary. LEAD is one of the major events that will be held to accommodate 100 DEA Gold participants from all parts of Canada to have leadership training. All 18 Gold Visioneers were gladly invited to participate in the one-week camp that was held in Kenora, Ontario.

The first five days of the camp focused on adventurous activities. For instance, the participants got involved in outdoor activities like canoeing, pitching the tent and shelter, archery and many other team building games. After that, all participants had a debriefing and exchange session in the last two days of the program. LEAD is an abbreviated form of Leadership, Experience, Adventure and Development. DEA aspires to train the participants with leadership and outdoor skills through experiential learning.

Jeff Ai

Jeff Ai, one of the Gold Visioneers, told us about his experiences in the camp. He expressed that all the participants were very friendly and talking to other people was like meeting old friends as they shared similar DEA experiences with each other. He also learnt about the importance of teamwork, cooperation and communication through joining and accomplishing different tasks and he thought the skills he acquired would be essential to his future development (both in school and workplace). Besides, he mentioned to us one of the most unforgettable experiences he had during the camp – a thunderstorm. He described the storm as the one that “he had never experienced before”. Despite the danger, Jeff told us that he treated such an experience as an once-in-a-lifetime experience and he even suspected that the thunderstorm was “manipulated” by DEA to test the participants’ problem-solving ability as well as teamwork. However, no matter what, such an experience indeed is a remarkable one and it gives the young adolescents an opportunity to show great courage throughout danger.