Duke of Edinburgh's Award can still open doors today

At a trustees' dinner to thank me for my contribution, I made a speech covering three things. I acknowledged I'd been lucky enough to meet a range of exceptional individuals - members of the trustee body and supporters of the award - who I would never have met in other pathways of my life. I commended the senior staff for maintaining the level of young people's engagement with the DofE at a time when youth services more broadly had been subjected to draconian, indeed vicious, financial cuts and commensurate reductions in provision. And I noted that, although the DofE is still associated in many people's minds with privilege and public schools, this does not have to be the case. Indeed, during my tenure as a trustee, I hope I had supported the reach of the DofE into the lives of more ordinary and sometimes even more at-risk and marginalised young people.