After sponsoring Campsmount Academy for the past four years, allowing any student to complete their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award, we’ve entered an exciting new partnership directly with the Award.
Working with Campsmount
As detailed in this article, we’re extremely proud of the success that Campsmount Academy has had with the Duke of Edinburgh award over the past few years. For the 19/20 season year 9 students from the academy donated an impressive 1950 hours of their time to volunteering for the local community.
This achievement was despite the delays and cancellations caused by the pandemic, with the students managing to complete 221 hours of volunteering, 286 hours of skills, and 143 hours of physical activities in 2020 alone.
This demonstrates that not only does supporting the Duke of Edinburgh award have a near immediate positive impact to the community at large, the DofE has proven to be fantastic for personal and professional development. It’s an opportunity that not everyone is always able to take, and Rejus is proud to have taken the steps to provide our support.
The school itself has embraced the DofE as part of it’s efforts to encourage student development, making the opportunity part of their ASPIRE programme.
The Sponsorship
Mathew Lynds, Director of Rejus, released this statement:
“In 4 years we've seen numbers increase 8 fold and rising. Last year the school came 32nd in the country for delivering charitable hours in the community. This year we are set to be 7th in the north of England, and hopefully top 20 nationally.
Just to put that in context, that includes all the public schools, military schools, Cadets, privileged schools. Some achievement for an ex-mining community!
The message being to the kids, that you can achieve, you can compete, you can be the best, let alone the personal development that is intrinsic to the award.”
This is why Rejus has chosen to reignite our partnership, this time directly with the DofE, in a move that will help more students and guarantee longevity to the arrangement. The opportunity works on an auto enrolment and opt out basis for year 9 students, so we’re opting in to sponsoring a full academic year in completing the award. It would be a fantastic achievement for both Campsmount and the Award.
In working with the DofE directly we’re not only continuing the tradition of allowing all students to participate in earning their Bronze award, but we’re also leaving the door open for unused budget to go towards Silver or even Gold to those students wanting to take the award to the next level.
Rejus was the first company in the United Kingdom to sponsor a whole school year for the prestigious award, and now we’re the first SME in the country to take on a commitment of this scale. We’re hoping to set the example to other businesses across the UK, prompting the sponsoring of more schools. The more companies that provide opportunities like this, the more it’s ultimately the children involved that get the reward.
The opportunity is a great indication of what can be possible for a promising community such as Doncaster, who are currently in the middle of a campaign to the earn their city status.
We hope to keep you updated as the arrangement progresses.
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