Bronze-level QUALIFYING JOURNEYS concluded for 2018-2019

This half-term saw 30 bold adventurers completing their Bronze-level Qualifying Adventurous Journeys in the Sinharaja Rainforest. These young people set off in separate teams to explore the outdoors, braving leeches and other natural phenomena including wildlife, rocky waterfalls and rainy weather. 

The Adventurous Journey is the fourth and only component of the International Award where participants are assessed for their ability to work successfully in a team in an unfamiliar environment. These Bronze-level entrants showed off their skills in navigating, map reading, route planning, camping and taking responsibility for various aspects of their team’s journey, in addition to working on their own individual focus projects.  

Our adventurers began their preparation and training for their final journeys last October to December 2018 and completed practice journeys in January this year. Early morning on Saturday 16th of February 2019, 18 Bronze-Award Entrants set out to Sinharaja for their overnight camping expeditions, while the second group of teams followed on Monday 18th of February.  

We thank Mr Fergus Whiteside who guided the teams with their initial route planning and Miss Chathuri Dimanthi, Miss Keshiya Anthony, Miss Sylvana Marjan and Mr Prasanna Heenatigala who gave up their half-term holidays to supervise the teams on their final journeys. 

We look forward to the Team Presentations at 3:00 pm on Tuesday 12 March as each team will take us through their personal and team experiences of the journey. 

Here is what Devni Wijesinghe in 10A says about her Adventurous Journey experience: 

“The Bronze qualifying journey was definitely an eye opening experience for me. I learnt that teamwork is key in a journey like this. My group learnt it the hard way when each one of us was too focused on our role in the group that we completely forgot to communicate with each other. In the end we barely had enough information to complete our route card. However, we learnt our lesson and the next day we cleared our slates and prepared to work together and aid each other. We communicated well this time, with the navigator, pace counter, map reader and the scout efficiently working together, while the safety ensured that we were in no danger and the leader making sure we noted down every important detail. At the end of the day we were able to finish our route card without a hitch due to the fact that we had all the information recorded beforehand. Aside from the importance of teamwork we discovered the beautiful fauna of Sinharaja hidden away behind the thick of the forest all the while enjoying the tiring but lively trek through it”.