Completing a Dynamic Youth Award (DYA)

This award is peer assessed at the planning stage and the review stage. A peer can be any other young person for example a friend, a sibling, someone else in the award group or a young person who they don’t know but has done a similar project.

The peer assessor does not need to have completed an award before.

They must tick to say that:

• the challenge is clearly described
• the challenge and targets are suitable
• there are at least two targets
• the challenge will take at least 10 hours to complete

The peer assessor must sign the challenge sheet and add the date

There is a minimum commitment of 10 hours of activity for the DYA. The total time they spend on their challenge will be printed on their certificate.

The time can be completed all at once, or broken down into chunks. The total hours should be a whole number, so if they have completed 6 and a half hours of activity, this should be recorded as 6 hours.

The time can be recorded using the time log in the challenge sheet, or if they would like to use a more creative way to record the time they can. Youth Scotland has optional evidence templates that can be downloaded here: DYA Time Log Sheet

The time taken on their challenge can include time spent planning and evaluating their challenge, and traveling somewhere new to complete their challenge.

The young person is asked to evidence their participation in their challenge. This helps them to show what they’ve done, as well as giving a visual record for them to look back on. They may choose to talk about their DYA in a job or college interview, and the portfolio of evidence can support this.

Evidence can be given in any form. There should be evidence that links back to all their targets, evidences the level of responsibility that they took and shows what they did to make up their challenge.

Evidence should be personalised, and come with captions explaining why it’s been included. Any group photos should have the young person highlighted.

Evidence can include:

• photos
• videos
• text
• drawings
• art work
• receipts
• tickets
• emails
• texts
• flyers
• invitations
• stickers
• supporting statements
• planning sheets
• newspaper clippings
• social media posts
• research
• anything else relevant

Any personal details that are included in evidence must be redacted before submitting to Youth Scotland.

Youth Scotland has optional evidence templates that can be downloaded here: DYA Evidence Sheet

It’s much easier to complete a DYA if evidence is gathered and included in the portfolios shortly after the activity has happened while it’s fresh in the young person’s memory. Otherwise putting the evidence together can build up into a daunting task.

There is space in the challenge sheet to write in the number of hours spent on the challenge. The total hours should be a whole number.

There is also a space to share the level of responsibilty taken in this challenge. The young person should tick only one of these boxes.

The young person needs to reflect on their challenge experience and how it has impacted on them. They are asked to consider six statements  and rate themselves against each relative to how they felt before starting their challenge. There is also an option for them to include additional comments.

The young person needs to do is to tick to tell us if the peer assessed others and if they’ve completed a DYA before. They then sign and date their work.

The finished award is peer assessed again. This can be by the same peer assessor as before, or someone different.

They must tick to say that:

• there is good evidence to show that the challenge was completed
• there is good evidence of all targets
• there is good evidence for the number of challenge hours
• there is good evidence for the level of responsibility

The peer assessor must sign the challenge sheet and add the date

The award needs to be checked to see that it meets all the criteria. This can be done first by the person delivering the award, for example a teacher, youth worker or young leader.

The criteria of the DYA are:

• the challenge is clearly described
• there are at least two targets
• the targets are appropriate, individual and personal
• the plan has been peer assessed, signed and dated
• whole hours are recorded on the challenge sheet
• the young person has identified a single level of responsibility
• ‘My challenge experience’ clearly describes the individual challenge undertaken
• a single level of responsibility has been ticked
• the personal learning section has been completed
• the second peer assessment stage has been completed, signed and dated
• the peer statement reflect the young person’s special achievement
• there is evidence of the challenge
• there is evidence of the targets
• there is evidence of the responsibility level claimed
• there is evidence of the challenge hours claimed
• the portfolios are well organised and presented

Dynamic Youth Awards must be submitted to Youth Scotland through our online submission platform, Awards Force. Once you have logged into your Awards Force account, you will register the candidate for each award on the Candidate Registration tab. (Please note: the text you provide will be used for the award certificate, so you should ensure that all names are spelled correctly). 

On the Candidate Registration tab, you will be asked to provide the following details about your group: 

• Local Authority Area  
•  Awards Delivery Hub 
• Awards Delivery Group 

You will then provide the following information about the young person who has completed the award: 

• Name of Candidate 
• Challenge Sheet Number 
• Date of birth 
• Postcode 
• Gender 
• Ethnicity 
• Disability 

You will then provide information on the challenge completed: 

• Challenge Title 
• Hours spent on Challenge 
• Evaluation information 

If you have questions or are having trouble accessing your Awards Force account, contact awards@youthscotland.org.uk. 

When completing your candidate registration on Awards Force, you will also be asked for samples of the portfolios from the submission. We ask for a minimum of 2 samples or 10% of the submission, which ever is greater. If you are submitting for juts one young person then you would upload a sample just for them. You will need to scan or photograph the challenge sheets, and and use the Evidence tab on Awards Force to upload the samples. These will be standardised to check that the quality of the awards is being upheld. After standardisation you will receive feedback, and you will either have your certificates sent back to you, or you will be asked to make changes and resubmit before this can happen.

Standardisation happens weekly, and certificates will be sent out within two weeks of standardisation.

Once a young person has completed an award this should be celebrated! This might be by sharing on social media or holding a celebration event.

Once they reach 14 years old they can push themselves further and complete a Youth Achievement Award. The DYA can count  towards up to 30 hours of the Bronze Youth Achievement Award.