Community Fund Award Winners

2016

The Gryphon School DofE and Ten Tors Scheme

The Gryphon School, Bristol Road, Sherborne

15 September 2016

Rachel Goodfellow - Rotarian Rotary Club of Sherborne Castles

Geoff Cooke - Manager DofE & Ten Tors Challenge Programme

Loveday Vickers and Scott Suri - Silver DofE Entrants & Successful Ten Tors Team Members

The Gryphon School runs Duke of Edinburgh's Awards and last year successfully entered a team into the Ten Tors Challenge for the second year. In 2015/16 they expanded to meet demand with 39 students on Bronze (two extra teams from 2014/15), enrolled their first 14 on Silver and 2 sixth formers on the Gold award. The groups meet weekly for training and participate in up to eight expeditions annually. Their pass rate at Bronze was 100% well above the DofE national average.

All this is possible due to the expanding team of volunteer teachers, parents and adults supporters. The main challenge has been purchasing equipment for eight teams, training staff and the changes to the DofE entry age. This means in 2016/17 the school needs to run a double cohort of Bronze from year 9 & year 10. The changes mean the school now has 95 students on Bronze, 32 on Silver and 11 on Gold – their largest intake so far.

On top of this, they plan to enter four teams into the Ten Tors Challenge in May 2017.

To keep the DofE/Ten Tors fee to an affordable level for local children they need to secure grants for 16/17. The award money will be used to hire qualified leaders (approximately £100 a day) to help train the students whilst they qualify their own volunteers (7 at £200 each) to become leaders. This means they won't need to hire as much help in 17/18. They also need to purchase 4 tents (@ £600) as replacements so the teams can sleep.

This award will be a substantial help in assisting them to reach the total cost of the project.