DofE at Home During Coronavirus

We recognise that this is a worrying time for everyone, and you may be concerned about how you will continue your DofE and achieve your Award, amongst many other things. If you can, it’s important to stay healthy and active during this time and continuing with your DofE activities can help with this – even if you’re not attending your usual venues for these activities and staying at home.

The activity requirements are still the same as before. Your activities must be for a minimum of 1 hour per week for your selected duration. The 1 hour per week can be split into smaller sessions, for example 2 x 30 minute fitness sessions.

Volunteering Activity Ideas

– Virtual volunteering
– Missing maps project
– If you are a Young Carer, your caring responsibilities can count for your volunteering. The Assessor should be a professional who is supporting you with your caring role, ideally from a Young Carers Project or Social Work/Youth Work departments. Young Carers should also be encouraged to contact their nearest Young Carers Project
– Prepare some sessions for future Beaver, Cub, Rainbow, Brownie or youth group meeting for once they resume
– Prepare some resources to be used by the younger members of your youth group to be sent home to parents online to help them during isolation
– Skype talk / face time / WhatsApp call to the elderly neighbour to keep them from being isolated
– Maintain Facebook or Instagram page / websites for a local group or charity
– Mentor younger siblings with their school work or aid them through guided reading
– Teach a family member how to play a musical instrument that you have good knowledge about
– Doing a social action project with Leonard Cheshire
– Learn all about energy and make a difference to the people and places around you through Energy Envoy

Physical Activity Ideas

– Complete a NHS fitness sessions online
– Do an hour’s YouTube fitness video each week (you can try Bootcamps, pilates, dance routines and more)
– If you’ve got a garden, do some circuit training
– WiiFit or Xbox Fitness games
– Just Dance computer games
– Sport skills (i.e. practising skills to develop in your favourite sport)
– Yoga (you could also use YouTube tutorials)
– Fitness challenges (e.g. 100 press up challenge, plank challenge, step challenge)

Skills Activity Ideas

– Join the virtual youth orchestra if you already play an instrument
– Learning sign language
– Learn first aid with St John Ambulance
– Cooking; learn to cook and serve a different meal each week/cook a meal using only what you have
– Learn to play an instrument – use YouTube or other online videos to help you
– Complete a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in an area that interests you - https://www.mooc.org/
– Complete a U:Bee Online Course - https://www.ubee.org.uk/
– Learn to knit, sew or crochet
– Make birthday / greeting cards – learning to do decoupage or print screen
– Learn some DIY skills – help out with any jobs at home
– Learn to garden – set up a vegetable or herb plot at home
– Create an app to help with online learning for primary students
– Learn to conjure / do magic tricks
– Learn coding and programming skills online
– Research your family: set up a family tree online and use resources to find out more about them – call your family to chat about their memories and family stories – ask them to send copies of birth and death certificates to help you in your research – how far can you go back?
– Reading; write and share a book review of each one you read
– Painting, drawing or model making
– Table top gaming
– Film making or vlogging
– Learn to build a website
– Put up a birdfeeder and learn about the birds coming to your garden
– Meditation – Headspace app
– Look after a family pet and create a report on how to care for them

Activity Evidence

It is more important now that you provide more evidence to ensure that your activities are approved when the time comes to submitting your section for completion. Evidence can be uploaded in a variety of ways:

– Photos - [.jpg,.jpeg,.jpe,.gif,.bmp,.png]
– Text
– Other - [.doc,.docx,.xls,.xlsx,.pdf,.txt,.rtf,.ppt,.pptx,.pps,.ppsx]

To help you keep track of your progress we have created activity logs as a personal record of the time you spend on your activities for each section. Remember you must add this information digitally to eDofE along with your evidence, these logs are just to help you keep track.

Volunteering Activity Log
Physical Activity Log
Skills Activity Log

Activity Assessors

Flowchart Guidance

Here is a simple step-by-step guide to how you can keep up your activities at home

Doing your DofE during the coronavirus outbreak

Changing your Activity Details on eDofE

Share your Activities