DofE News Briefs, April 2020

Short News are also available in English here >> News Kafe s DofE At the end of March we organized an on-line Kafe s DofE. The response was positive, so we decided to continue. At each online meeting you will have the opportunity to chat and get advice from other leaders. Individual meetings will now have their own topics. The next dates for which you can register can be found here https://bit.ly/KafesDofE2. Expeditions, DofE Fund. DofE Fund Each year we offer support to Local Centres in the form of a contribution from the DofE Fund. Due to the current exceptional situation, we have decided to take the following action: Extending the grant We anticipate that many of the activities you were supported for at the start of the year will carry over into the autumn. If you are currently drawing down your DofE grant and will not be able to draw it down by the end of June, please ask your Regional Manager for an extension. Anyone who applies will be allowed to draw down the grant until December 2020. If you draw down the grant as contracted, send a statement of account and final report to your Regional Manager by the end of June. The necessary documents can be found on our website (https://dofe.cz/fond-dofe) Call 2020 The usual dates for the opening of the Fund in spring and autumn will not take place this year. In 2020 we will be launching only 1 call. We will inform you about the dates and conditions in due course via Short News, the Regional Managers' report and also at the online meeting of Coffee with DofE. DofE Club Members of the DofE Club have joined the DofE Challenge. For six weeks, they will commit at least one hour a week to an exercise, skills and volunteering activity of their choice. And what activities have they chosen? Jump rope, online tutoring or coding, for example. You can find photos from their DofE Challenge on the DofE Club Facebook page https://bit.ly/DofEKlubFB Any DofE alumni and DofE leader can take part in the DofE Challenge! Expeditions The current situation is also impacting on DofE expeditions. We are now often asked how to move forward with completing your participants' levels. Many of you have already planned expeditions, or have planned them for the end of the academic year. We are trying to make things as easy as possible for you and offer some advice: we strongly advise against organising expeditions while restrictive government regulations are in place. Safety and health come first. Expeditions do not need to be registered with the ORB several months in advance, just 2 weeks. The date can even be changed in a created expedition that has not yet taken place. We are now preparing a detailed list of measures which we will present in a special Short News on 28 April, followed by a Coffee with DofE meeting. Calendar All the events we had planned for the spring have had to be cancelled. So there will be no Meet Up in Brno or Ostrava and the April and May dates for Basic and Expedition Training are also cancelled. We are also cancelling the traditional June ceremonies. However, you have the option to hold the June ceremonies yourself at your Local Center. The DofE National Centre will be happy to provide you with everything you need to do this. We will bring you more details of the process at the end of April. However, you can still count on the DofE Leader Camp from 26-27 September and the Bronze, Silver and Gold ceremonies in the autumn. Did you know that the international video conference in April to discuss the DofE's performance during the COVID-19 pandemic brought together DofE representatives from 87 countries? You can also download the short reports as a pdf file.