Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset, Justin’s Award Story

Starting the Award 

“When I first entered high school, I was interested in joining a plethora of clubs and activities. I participated in my school’s coding club and helped organize hackathons such as the PCHackers hackathon at my school. But I found myself wanting more. After joining my school’s leadership council the teacher representative, recommended I participate in The Duke of Edinburgh International Award.  

Bronze Award 

Before starting the Award, I had no idea what industry I wanted to work in. I was interested in various fields, including game creation, front-end web programming, animation, and video editing. When I first started the bBronze Award, I explored the process of animating. The skills portion of the Award motivated me to devote time each week to learn and master Blender, a powerful 3D animation tool. The application’s learning curve was steep, requiring hours of concentration to understand the program’s user interface. However, with the Award’s organized weekly schedule, I was able to hone my learning abilities. I was eventually able to persevere through this steep learning curve. After months of learning, I was able to form a studio and team of animators to work with some of the largest content creators on the YouTube platform, such as LankyBox and FGTeeV. We had approximately 20 million views across all of the videos. Without the Award providing me with the motivation and interest to explore my curiosity for animating, I would not have been able to attain this achievement.  

“Thanks to the Award, I was able to motivate myself to learn everything behind all of these different fields, and I was able to get a good understanding of my passion.” 

Silver Award 

After achieving the Bronze Award, I decided to pursue my passion for game development through the Silver Award. I followed a similar process of actively learning every week and adhering to a structured schedule on learning how to develop games. Although learning the programming language LUA, which was used to construct the games, was tough at first, my previous experience with AP computer science from my high school’s advanced SciTech program and the previous learning experience from the Bronze Award enabled me to persevere through the learning curve. Throughout the program, I continued to improve my game development abilities, creating new combat systems and maps for action and adventure games. Throughout the program, I was able to establish my own game studio and even put together a team of ten passionate game developers that specialized in designing, 3D modeling, and programming. We were able to get over 12,000 members and 50,000 plays for our game studio, and this accomplishment would not have been possible without the motivation provided by the Award. 

Passion – Software Development  

The most valuable asset from this Award experience was the opportunity to explore all of these passions. With all of these experiences, I was able to pinpoint my passion for software development and I was also able to gain an understanding of my entrepreneurial mindset. Now I am in my last year of high school, and thanks to the Award, I have been able to hone up on my learning abilities.  

Join the Award 

I would recommend the Award for any young person, especially if you have the motivation and urge to engage with your community. By partaking in the Award, you will be able to get a good understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. The experience, skills, and confidence you will gain from the Award will transform you into a leader and will set you up for success. Not only that, but you will also develop a broad set of skills needed to succeed in whatever industry you want to pursue.” 

• Justin, Bronze & Silver Award Holder 

We are so proud of Justin for his accomplishments. We hope he has inspires you to Join The Award, Volunteer with The Award, or Become an Award Centre.  

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