How the Award Began

by H R H The Duke of Edinburgh

"In the summer of 1938, I found myself walking five miles, as fast as I could, along country roads in Morayshire.  I had never done anything like it before, and I fervently prayed I would never have to do anything like it again.  It so happens my prayer was answered because I was completing – successfully as it turned out – a section of the Moray badge, a direct ancestor of what has come to be known as The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme.

The original idea came from the same man who thought up the Outward Bound Schools and the Atlantic (now World) Colleges.  Kurt Hahn had been a Rhodes Scholar and a Private Secretary to the last Imperial German Chancellor before becoming a school-master.  He founded the boarding school at Salem in Germany along English public school lines, but neither this nor his Jewish background, endeared him to the Nazis and he only just managed to escape to this country in the early 1930’s.  By 1935, he had founded another school at Gordonstoun and, for very good reasons which I will not go into here, I followed him there from Salem.

All this was forgotten during the war and it was only in the early ‘fifties that Hahn started to make intermittent approaches to me about a National badge scheme, based on the old Moray badge idea.  By 1954, I had agreed that, if he could get a representative committee to give their approval to the general idea, I would be prepared to take the chair and thrash out the practical details.

A first draft appeared in 1955 and we sent it to all sorts of voluntary youth and other organisations for their comments.  After a further round of discussions and amendments, the Scheme was launched, first in an experimental form for three years, in September 1956.  Originally designed for boys only, a version suitable for girls was launched two years later, and in 1969, the two versions were merged into one, but with slightly different requirements for boys and girls."

In New Zealand although one or two organisations started taking part in the Award in 1962, it was not until 19 July 1963 that the Governor General, Sir Bernard Fergusson, held the inaugural meeting of the National Council of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award in New Zealand at Government House in Wellington when a Constitution of the Award in New Zealand was drawn up.  A General Secretary, Brigadier J R Page, was appointed and an Award Office on a part time basis established.

On the 27 September 1963, Prince Philip acknowledged the establishment of the Award in New Zealand and sent his formal greetings from Buckingham Palace.