#MoreThanYouThink

My Journey Through the Mark Scott Leadership for Life Award

Words & Photos by Ben Pryde

In April I humbly accepted my certificate of completion of the Mark Scott Leadership for Life Award at the Radisson Blu on Argyle Street.

When sitting back down in my seat after receiving this certificate, I fondly reminisced on the six-month journey - from canoeing across Loch Eil, to countless community project meetings, to the project delivery in Drumchapel and to the lifelong friendships I made with total strangers.

Even now, it’s hard to believe this fun, challenging and rewarding experience is all wrapped up in a single sheet of A4 paper.

The Award was built up from the tragic killing of 16-year-old Mark Scott in 1996, who was stabbed in a sectarian attack in Glasgow.
Following this atrocity, in 1998 Mark’s parents founded the Award to help young people discover their talents and boost their self-confidence and self-esteem.

And 27 years on, it is still changing young people - like myself - and their lives for the better, showing us we can do anything we pour our heart into.

Myself and my two friends applied for the Award back in May last year, after Steven Elliott, one of the project leaders, came into our school to promote the Award to our year group.

Being for S6-only, we felt it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. A way to have a good time outside school, gain an honour most Scots don’t have and participate in new experiences which were way outside our comfort zones.

The Award is split into two parts - a five-day residential away in Loch Eil Outward Bound Centre near Fort William and a community project delivered in our local area.

We had never met the rest of the people in our group - eight more strangers from Clydebank High and Drumchapel High as well as our own from St Peter the Apostle but as soon as we got on the coach to Loch Eil it was as if we had known each other for years.

We got talking, swapping life stories while playing card games, setting a solid foundation of trust and friendship even before we entered the centre.

Five days of adventure and daunting experiences soon followed; an overnight expedition to the small town of Arisaig where we had to pitch our own tents while camping in a rural area, canoeing across the stretch of Loch Eil and climbing a 12-foot wall just by boosting each other up were a few among many difficult yet fun tasks we were set.

This was coupled with completing a SCQF Level 6 (equivalent to Higher) or Level 7 (equivalent to Advanced Higher) award in Community Leadership just by answering questions in a learning booklet.

The questions helped me understand why the skills learned through the physical tasks could be used to help bolster myself and transfer these skills into later life after high school.

The residential was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life.

I was out of school but still learning new concepts, building new and existing skills and making friendships with people whom I’d never met before in my life.

To also receive an Advanced Higher-level award for just an extra few hours work was incredible.
And even after the Award was completed we are still a tight-knit group - we will never forget just how much fun we had during those five days.

Moving on after the residential, we were split into two groups of six to plan out and deliver our community projects.

The spec was simple: decide what area we want to focus on, find a community partner to help sponsor and fundraise our efforts, and find ways to actually fundraise our project.

My team decided to clean up a skate park on Southdeen Avenue in Drumchapel for our project, selling football cards and having bake sales in order to fundraise.

Through months of meetings in which we planned every tiny detail to meet and succeed in our aims, our hard graft was rewarded with spectacular results at the start of March.

In just four days, the skate park transformed from a barren, mossy area to a bright space spray-painted with kindness, cleared of all the litter and mess we first encountered.

I was stunned at our collective efforts on this transformation and the locals seem to love it. I walked through the park area at the start of May and found no vandalism and no litter - evidence that our clean-up is a respected and acknowledged part of Drumchapel.
I would urge any future S6 to undertake this Award.

It is so, so beneficial to shaping yourself for your future after high school and you learn so many valuable life lessons, so many new skills and you make so many new, lifelong friendships.

The slogan of the Mark Scott Leadership for Life Award is so true - it really does help you believe you are #MoreThanYouThink.

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