Rejus Celebrates 5 Years Sponsoring the DofE Award at Campsmount Academy

Rejus have been sponsoring Campsmount Academy students to complete their Duke of Edinburgh Award (DofE) since 2017. Over the last few years the students have faced more challenges to completing their award than the majority of participants in the DofE Award’s long history, and Rejus are proud to say they’ve both stood by and escalated their commitment to Campsmount Academy in that time.

Earlier this year Doncaster Facilities Management company Rejus received an incredibly insightful update from the DofE, informing them of the impact of their sponsorship. Read on to learn more about the impact the sponsorship has had.

The Duke of Edinburgh Award aims to offer students valuable life experience that includes learning new skills and challenging themselves to partake in personal growth. The aim of this is to better prepare them for working life and the variety of challenges they’ll face following school. Recognising that not every student can afford to partake in this tremendous opportunity, Babs and Mathew Lynds of Rejus initially committed to sponsoring Year 10 students to complete their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award. This initial commitment would grow and expand, eventually reaching the point that any student at the school could access the opportunity from Year 9.

The above-discussed initial investment with Campsmount School between the years of 2017 to 2020 allowed an impressive 503 students to partake in the life-altering opportunity. Not only did students get to complete their Bronze DofE award, the volunteering aspect of the programme went on to have a recognisable positive impact on the local community.

Some achievements of this initial span include:

• A massive 14,280 Hours of volunteer time being spent contributing to the people of Doncaster.
• That’s the equivalent to an impressive £75,398 worth of voluntary work.
• 128 of those students went on to complete a Bronze, Silver, or Gold Award.
• Rejus were proud to see that the sponsorship led to a 37% increase of marginalised students starting their DofE Award.
• Overall, there was an incredible 295% increase in students starting their Bronze, Silver, and Gold awards

A former Campsmount student of the time, Josie, went on to complete her Gold DofE Award. Speaking on the impact of the award, she stated:

“The DofE has given me the confidence to step out of my comfort zone, a sense of independence and an ability to overcome challenges. It taught me about team work as everyone brought different skills, different personalities to the group and that’s what made us work. We learned how to problem solve as we stood, lost, in the middle of a field and had to think rationally about how we could get back on track.

These are lessons I won’t be afraid to apply in the future to different situations.”

• Josie, 2021 DofE Youth Ambassador.

Seeing the fantastic impact the sponsorship had, Rejus decided to step up their contribution in 2021.

Rejus committed to a 10-Year Partnership with the Duke of Edinburgh Award and Campsmount Academy, enabling more participants and applying unused budget to let interested students partake in their Silver or even Gold Awards.

To learn how Campsmount students performed over the first year of this initial commitment, visit the original Rejus article here.