About the award

The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award is an exciting self development programmed available to young people in over 144 countries equipping them with life skills to make a difference to themselves, their communities and their world. Since began in 1956, this award has been dedicated to the personal development of young people coming from all backgrounds all around the world. To date over Ten million young people from over 144 countries have been motivated to undertake a variety of voluntary and challenging activities, and in return, widened their horizon of opportunities.

The award programmed, developed by the widely known German educationist Dr. Kurt Hahn is a non-competitive and balanced self-development programmed designed to complement the academic education in ensuring an all round, complete and holistic development of the young people. While pursuing the activities of the award, the young people learn life skills like negotiation, research, communication, problem solving, presentation skills, team skills and develops a sense of responsibility to others and feels the rise of the degree of compassion and care for the world and its people unknown to them. With the elevation of self-belief and self-confidence, the young people learn to connect themselves to the broader society and develop a willingness to try new things, accepting challenges, setting up goals and putting in dedicated effort to accomplish those goals

The Award is flexible and can be done by anyone aged 14-25 in their own time: mental or physical ability or social circumstances should never be a barrier. Moreover, the individual chooses what activities to do depending on his/her interests and resources. There are three Awards to achieve: Bronze, Silver and Gold. The Gold Award takes the longest to accomplish and is the harder one of the three. In Bangladesh one has to start off with the Bronze