THE Earl of Wessex was in the province yesterday for a round of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme (DofE) engagements.
His first stop was in Belfast where he officially opened a new DofE regional office and met young people, including pupils from St Malachy’s College and Belfast Royal Academy.
Since its inception in the 1950s, the awards have encouraged and supported self-development of 14 to 25-year-olds — including 140 young people living with cancer who have completed the programme.
The new regional office at the Forestgrove Business Park will cater for the thousands who commence either gold, silver or bronze schemes in Northern Ireland each year.
Prince Edward is a trustee of the DofE awards and took time to listen to supporters, including the Positive Futures Group, the Probation Board and Youth Committee representatives.
In his second engagement of the day, the prince presented Duke of Edinburgh gold award certificates to young people from the Northern Ireland Cancer Fund for Children (NICFC) at Shimna Valley Village in Newcastle, Co Down.
NICFC has been running the DofE Award from Narnia presentations since 2005 — offering the teenagers and young adults the opportunity to undertake either of the three certificates.
Along with sponsors of the programme and Shimna Valley staff, among those there to greet the guest of honour were Health Minister Edwin Poots and East Belfast MP Naomi Long.
Across the UK, almost 280,000 young people take part in DofE licensed programmes in groups at over 10,000 centres.
Later in the visit the prince met several DofE gold award participants and was shown their prowess at packing a rucksack, equipment checks, map reading and food planning.
Prior to departure, the prince was invited to sign the visitors’ book and examined the plans for a new NICFC building project.