Volunteering work for DoE

[boyse7en]

My 14yo daughter is doing the Duke of Edinburgh bronze award this year. To achieve it she has to do three main tasks - a sporting one, a skills one and a volunteering one.
Sporting one is easy to sort out (she's going to do cycling every week, building up to a long-distance ride we will do together in the summer)
Skills one is a bit trickier (she's going to do cooking, using recipes and techniques she can follow on YouTube etc)
But we're stuck on the volunteering. Normally I would have got her helping out at the local hospice or an old peoples home as she likes talking and helping out. Or a few hours a week helping in a charity shop or at the local refuge or similar. She also likes wildlife and outdoors stuff but the Wildlife trust has closed all its centres and the National Park isn't taking on any tasks. The Covid restrictions have put all helping opportunities on hold.
So I'm looking for any ideas of what we could try and find.
Anyone else got kids doing this? What are they doing?

[Spare tyre]

Will probably struggle at the mo, how about tidying old folks garden, litter picking a school, local lane etc

[boyse7en]

Spare tyre said:

Will probably struggle at the mo, how about tidying old folks garden, litter picking a school, local lane etc

I have got litter picking as a fall-back, but it is a bit "easy" as we live in a rural location so there isn't really much litter around, and driving her somewhere seems a bit against the rules/advice.

[Spare tyre]

boyse7en said:

Spare tyre said:

Will probably struggle at the mo, how about tidying old folks garden, litter picking a school, local lane etc

I have got litter picking as a fall-back, but it is a bit "easy" as we live in a rural location so there isn't really much litter around, and driving her somewhere seems a bit against the rules/advice.

Clearing ditches, clearing drain covers, trimming paths, planting treees

[MentalSarcasm]

Depending on how rural you are, could you help her set up and manage a Little Free Library? You create a weather-proof box with a door that can fit a bunch of books, and then place it somewhere that can be accessed by people walking past. She can then be responsible for checking it every couple of days to tidy it up, make sure it hasn't been vandalised, and make sure it's keeping the elements out.

[alorotom]

I did the whole scheme myself and still help out with it.

If she is doing cookery as the skill she could use the skill and volunteer to take meals to those struggling or elderly.

There is a lot of poetic license within the scheme so as long as it’s community intentioned she should be fine.

[rab.s]

Have you considered your local scout group? At 14 she could join as an explorer and enroll in the young leaders programme.
She could then volunteer assisting with the younger sections.
Most explorer groups also run DoE courses / expeditions, so additional training opportunities for silver and gold.

[boyse7en]

Spare tyre said:

boyse7en said:

Spare tyre said:

Will probably struggle at the mo, how about tidying old folks garden, litter picking a school, local lane etc

I have got litter picking as a fall-back, but it is a bit "easy" as we live in a rural location so there isn't really much litter around, and driving her somewhere seems a bit against the rules/advice.

Clearing ditches, clearing drain covers, trimming paths, planting treees

That may be a little bit heavy duty for a 14 year old

[boyse7en]

alorotom said:

I did the whole scheme myself and still help out with it.

If she is doing cookery as the skill she could use the skill and volunteer to take meals to those struggling or elderly.

There is a lot of poetic license within the scheme so as long as it’s community intentioned she should be fine.

I wondered about this, then started thinking about whether she would need to have hygiene certificates and suchlike in case she manages to give an old lady food poisoning.

[boyse7en]

rab.s said:

Have you considered your local scout group? At 14 she could join as an explorer and enroll in the young leaders programme.
She could then volunteer assisting with the younger sections.
Most explorer groups also run DoE courses / expeditions, so additional training opportunities for silver and gold.

I was a scout back in my youth. It was a bit boring then, lots of quasi militaristic marching and drill stuff in the town hall. But I think it is a lot more modern and interesting since those days. I'll have a look and see if there is a local group, but I would assume they are not active at the moment due to the lockdown.

[alorotom]

boyse7en said:

alorotom said:

I did the whole scheme myself and still help out with it.

If she is doing cookery as the skill she could use the skill and volunteer to take meals to those struggling or elderly.

There is a lot of poetic license within the scheme so as long as it’s community intentioned she should be fine.

I wondered about this, then started thinking about whether she would need to have hygiene certificates and suchlike in case she manages to give an old lady food poisoning.

As long as she steers clear of shellfish and other notorious foods she should be fine.

She could even just do desserts.

Just be clear about allergens etc.

Simple leaflet drop with some criteria or even put something on local Facebook groups... some will pull their sob stories out for a freebie but she doesn’t have to do many hours to qualify for it.

[PhilboSE]

Youngest daughter at same stage. We’ve got her helping with the local “talking newspaper” who record stories from the local news and distribute it to blind people.

She gets sent articles and records them on her phone and sends them to the team that curate and distribute them.

Might be worth investigating if there’s one in your area. The feedback from the listeners is that they really like the novelty of a “young” voice.

[ReverendCounter]

What about some basic eco related stuff (wellies + waterproof gloves required) - clearing some rubbish out of a stream or something? Some magnet fishing? Maybe there's a local group who might want a hand.

[RizzoTheRat]

Canal preservation society were looking for people to help tidy up tow paths a while back.

Is there an opportunity do something like picking up shopping for elderly people locally? Probably organised through a local Facebook page if something is already happening (assuming you're in a village, bit difficult if your properly rural)

[Chrisgr31]

boyse7en said:

I was a scout back in my youth. It was a bit boring then, lots of quasi militaristic marching and drill stuff in the town hall. But I think it is a lot more modern and interesting since those days. I'll have a look and see if there is a local group, but I would assume they are not active at the moment due to the lockdown.

By daughter did her DoE bronze the year before last. She volunteered as a young leader at the local Brownie group, and still does it. At the moment their meetings are online.

[sleepezy]

My sons the same age. He helped out at the local Beavers as they were holding remote meetings.

Bronze and Silver are pretty flexible. Gold is where the problem is as they are much more stringent. Elder son is struggling for the skill as he can't go out and do anything new, with the burden of independent proof.

[hidetheelephants]

RizzoTheRat said:

Canal preservation society were looking for people to help tidy up tow paths a while back.

Is there an opportunity do something like picking up shopping for elderly people locally? Probably organised through a local Facebook page if something is already happening (assuming you're in a village, bit difficult if your properly rural)

Our village busybody CV19 help page has folk fetching whatever is needed for the vulnerable or those shielding; shopping, prescriptions, fuel for those without central heating. Some is informal for neighbours, other bits are more organised, some prescriptions seemingly done through the first responders group as they have ID/CRB checks etc.

[aka_kerrly]

boyse7en said:

rab.s said:

Have you considered your local scout group? At 14 she could join as an explorer and enroll in the young leaders programme.
She could then volunteer assisting with the younger sections.
Most explorer groups also run DoE courses / expeditions, so additional training opportunities for silver and gold.

I was a scout back in my youth. It was a bit boring then, lots of quasi militaristic marching and drill stuff in the town hall. But I think it is a lot more modern and interesting since those days. I'll have a look and see if there is a local group, but I would assume they are not active at the moment due to the lockdown.

I was also going to suggest the Scouts/Guide and Venture scouts when she gets older. I used the scouts for plenty of DofE related items at bronze/silver/gold level.

In terms of experience i think it very much depends where your scout troop is based, other than St Georges day I can't recall lots of marching about or silly drill stuff. We would "fall in" to line up at the start of a meet and do 5 minutes of raising/lowering a flag but aside from that it was a lot of fun & games. My troop was in a rural location so we did plenty of local trips like hikes up into the woods on treasure trails, capture the flag, in the winter there were night time navigation exercises, local camping trips with the old military tents or riding it out in a bivvy on your own, link up with the other rival scout troops to whoop their asses in a variety of sports & skills based challenges, then once a year the Malvern Challenge (sadly no longer operating which is a huge shame) was a Scout/Guide event with troops from all over the UK and Europe all coming to a weekend camping/adventure weekend.

It's a shame that covid will interfere with a lot of organisations who would normally rely on having volunteers to get a wide variety of jobs done, the National Trust were particularly good. I did a few weeks at different estates doing grounds keeping work, three weeks in Lyme and Dunham Massey with a group of 30odd teenagers being "organised" by a group of barely 20somethings, very much like a PGL holiday but instead of doing archery/air riffles/ climbing walls we were hacking down rhododendrons in the day and getting drunk on cheap cider sitting around larger and larger fires in the nights

[jinkster]

I did my Bronze, Silver and Gold back in the day (20 years ago).

Volunteering, how about at the local vaccination centre? Car parking etc or a local group helping collecting supermarket stuff etc for people shielding. She would need it signing off by an organiser so might be worth checking with the DoE place.

[aka_kerrly]

jinkster said:

Volunteering, how about at the local vaccination centre? Car parking etc or a local group helping collecting supermarket stuff etc for people shielding. She would need it signing off by an organiser so might be worth checking with the DoE place.

Bloody good ideas there!