The Duke of Edinburgh's Award

The Duke of Edinburgh's Award (commonly abbreviated DofE)^[2] is a youth awards programme founded in the United Kingdom in 1956 by the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, which has since expanded to 144 nations. The awards recognise adolescents and young adults for completing a series of self-improvement exercises modelled on Kurt Hahn's solutions to his "Six Declines of Modern Youth".

In the United Kingdom, the programme is run by The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, a royal charter corporation. A separate entity, The Duke of Edinburgh's International Award Foundation, promotes the award abroad and acts as a coordinating body for award sponsors in other nations, which are organised into 62 National Award Authorities and a number of Independent Operators. Award sponsors in countries outside the United Kingdom may call their awards The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, although the recognition also operates under a variety of other names in countries without a historic link to the British monarchy, or that have severed such links.