AWARD LEADER RESOURCES
Your work is not done once a participant registers for the Award.
Running an Award Centre requires enormous time and effort to be invested in ongoing recruiting, screening, training, and support of both participants and other Award volunteers. Once a participant has started their Award activities, your role is to mentor them through their Award with advice and encouragement from start through to completion. As an Award Leader, you need to regularly stay in touch with your group. As a general guide, most Award Leaders ideally meet with their group weekly for 30 minutes to an hour— this gives the participants the time to share their experiences and ask any questions.
Award Leaders are responsible to support participant needs and encouraging participants to take an active role in constructing their strategies to drive them forward. You have an important role to play, ensuring participants follow a clear process to achieve their section goals. To refresh the Award Leader training you have completed, you can find descriptions below of the three actions you should perform for each section of the Award to help guide participants through the experiential learning cycle:
PLAN: Firstly, help your participants to plan their activity. Encourage them to discuss their expectations and goals, and if necessary help them identify resources or training that may be required. You may be required to help identify suitable Assessors for your participants.
DO: Get your participants to start their activity and support them in completing their time requirement. With their Section Assessors, encourage participants to regularly update their Online Record Book, keeping a good record and evidence of their work towards their goal.
REVIEW: A Section Assessor and participant should review each activity from time to time to give the participant an opportunity to raise any issues or concerns. Once a participant has completed a section in their Online Record Book, sit down with them and review their experience with their Section Assessor, helping the participant reflect and analyse their activities. Reflect on the highs as well as the lows and what they have learnt about themselves. By spending time analyzing what went well and why, helps build up the participant's self-confidence and self-esteem.