Welcome to your NYAA Gold Award! You are at the start of an exciting and fulfilling adventure where you will have many great experiences, make new friends, and push your boundaries.
The following information is here to help you to achieve an Award, to clarify the Award’s requirements, and to tell you what to do next. Keep this document in a safe place - don’t lose it! - it will make your life easier.
Award section
Service
Adventurous journey
Skills
Physical recreation
Requirements
At least 60 hours spread over at least 12 months
At least 4 days out, including 3 nights under shelter/tent with at least 32 hours of effort and activity
At least 18 months of individual progress and sustained interest (12 months for
Silver Award holders)
Show improvement of overall performance and genuine effort for at least 40 hours over at least 12 weeks
Residential service project
Undertake or initiate a project that will serve or have a beneficial impact on a community (Grade 11 can normally use Challenge Week)
It is important to note the “at least” in the above requirements! To take ‘Service’ as an example, it means that 60 hours is the least amount of Service that you need to do – you should aim to do more, perhaps 65 or 70 hours. Also, you have to do Service on a regular basis: for a minimum of 12 months – so you should aim to exceed this amount: perhaps for 13 or 14 months.
If you remember that all the requirements are minimum amounts, and aim to exceed them, then you should not make the common mistake of thinking that you must squeeze 60 hours of Service into the space of 12 months, for example. If it took you 15 months to complete 60 hours of Service, then you would have met both of the requirements. If it only took you 10 months to complete 60 hours, then you would not have met both of the requirements – you completed the required hours, but did not spread it over enough months.
The idea behind this is that the Award scheme should not overwhelm you – it allows you the space and time to have a break from activities if, for example, you have exams, or go away on holiday. Your academic school work should be your priority, so you are encouraged to efficiently manage the time that you spend doing NYAA activities. NYAA Awards are marathons, not sprints, so take them steadily!
The only criteria for achieving an Award are that you show progress and interest in your activities. At the end of the Award you should simply have improved from when you started. The Award is personal, rather than competitive, so it does not matter what level you are when you start an activity – you could be a beginner or an expert – as long as you have raised your level by the time you finish the Award.

How do you show your progress and interest? Every time you do an activity, record what you did in your Award Diary. You must include the date, the details of what you did, and how long you did it for.
Think about what you did when you record the details: if your Physical Recreation activity is ‘football’, don’t just write:
“Monday 9 th , football, 1 hour” or “Wednesday 11 th , football practice, 1.5 hours”
…think about what you did specifically, and reflect upon it. Ask yourself questions: what did I do in particular? How well did I do it? What will I do next time to improve? If you do this, you will write something like:
“Monday 9 th , practiced taking penalties – found I could hit the bottom right corner of the goal every time, but kept hitting it too high when I tried the left side. I need to work on shooting to the left to be more accurate. Then practiced long distance passing, most of my passes were on target, but could be improved”
Your Award is achieved based on the evidence that you record in your Diary: if you write nothing down, you will not achieve an Award - even if you did all of your activities - because there will be no proof!
When you start your activities in the next few weeks, you must find an instructor for each of your activities and ask them to be your instructor for your Gold Award. An instructor must be at least 21 years old, and should be suitably qualified or experienced in the activity that you are doing. If you do an activity that is an ECA, the teacher in charge would be a good choice. If you do an activity outside of school, then you should ask an appropriate adult. For example, if you have private piano lessons, your piano teacher would be an excellent choice.
Your Record Book is for your instructor to sign only when you have finished the relevant Award section.
So your piano teacher can sign your Record Book, but only once, and only after you have been playing piano for at least 6 months. This is the only paperwork that instructors have to do – it is not like the
SMILES Award where a teacher signs every time that you do an activity. This is worth mentioning to instructors, as most of them don’t like doing lots of paperwork! You must look after your Record Book and keep it safe: it backs up the evidence that you record in your Award Diary.
You should meet your instructors regularly throughout the course of your Award, so that they can witness your progress and help you to improve. You must inform your instructors that you are doing the
Gold Award at the start of your activities – don’t wait until you have nearly finished.
As well as overlooking all the sections of your Award, I will be your instructor for the ‘Adventurous
Journey’ section – so don’t worry about asking me – but you must ask your Service, Physical Recreation, and Skills’ instructors as soon as possible. If you are going to use Challenge Week for your Residential
Service Project, then you should ask your Challenge Week supervisor. For Challenge Week to count as a
Residential Service Project, it should include 4-5 days of useful service, as a minimum amount.

The Adventurous Journey is a fantastic part of the NYAA Award scheme at all levels, as I’m sure you will agree if you have previously completed a Bronze or Silver Adventurous Journey. As Gold is a step up from Silver, you will be challenged to be fully self-sufficient on the Adventurous Journey: you will have to master such skills as navigation, route planning, first aid, campcraft, and cooking in a survival setting to a very high standard.
On your final qualifying journey you will not be relying on a guide to show you the way: you will have planned the route in advance, and will be navigating it yourself – this means that you may become lost!
– but you should be able to deal with any minor mishaps and get yourself back on course. No member of staff will be telling you when to have breakfast, or take a break for lunch – because you will have planned your journey in advance, including meal times and exactly what food you take. An adult assessor will be attached to each expedition group to observe your performance, and to maintain your safety, but they will not be leading your group - unless there is a serious emergency.
To enable you to do this, an exciting expedition training programme has been arranged to teach you all the required skills. There will also be preliminary expeditions for you to practice and hone your skills so that you and your instructors are confident in your abilities. Expedition training is compulsory: you will not attend a qualifying journey unless you have completed the training to the instructors’ satisfaction – if it was otherwise, you would simply be unsafe and a risk to the expedition.
Arrangements for expedition training will be decided depending upon how many students sign up to the
Gold Award. You can start forming your own expedition groups: these should include 4 – 8 people that are all doing Gold Award. Your group will train, attend practice expeditions and complete the qualifying journey together.
1.
Fill in your personal details in your Award Diary and Record Book.
2.
Read the information in your Award Diary and Record Book very carefully to ensure that you understand the requirements of the Award.
3.
Decide on one activity for each section. Your activities cannot be done in school time, but they can be ECAs; they can also be something that you do entirely separately from school. Only one activity per section please!

4.
If your activities are ECAs, read the ‘SJII Activity Booklet’ to check that they are NYAA applicable.
Choose your Service carefully – I am afraid that ‘Legion of Mary’ and ‘YCS’ do not count for
NYAA purposes, so you may have to do an additional or different Service.
5.
Meet the instructors of your chosen activities, and ask them if they are happy to monitor your progress and sign your Record Book when you complete the Award.
6.
Start recording your activities straight away in your Award Diary. A couple of sentences for each diary entry is ideal, you don’t have to write pages and pages, but you do need to include some details and reflection.
7.
You can only count activity that you have done since you enrolled for the Award. This date is written on page 4 of your Record Book.
8.
Note that your instructors do not need to be present every single time you do an activity for you to record it in your Diary. For example, if your Skill is ‘Piano’, then you should record your piano lessons with your instructor, but also record your practice sessions, concerts, exams, and any other piano playing that you do.
Everything I do is designed to help you to achieve your Award. If you have any problems, issues, or misunderstandings, I am here to help you, so don’t hesitate to ask me for help!
The main reason students fail to achieve Awards is not because they don’t do their activities, but because they fail to record their activities in their Award Diaries! For this reason I shall be checking your
Award Diaries on a regular basis to ensure that you are not falling behind – this is for your benefit.
You can find me in the staffroom in the La Salle block, or you can email me: adam.davey@sjiinternational.com.sg