Batley teenager selected as UK Youth Ambassador for Duke of Edinburgh Award

Haniyah Motara, 18, joins a cohort of just 31 DofE Award holders, aged between 16 and 24 from all over the UK, who will advocate for young people by sharing their experiences on key issues impacting them.

Together, they will make young people’s voices heard by speaking at events, meeting key decision-makers in Parliament and beyond, and feeding into decisions to shape the direction of the DofE charity’s work.

Haniyah, who was educated at the British School of Bahrain, first discovered the DofE through the charity’s International Award, which offers the DofE to young people living abroad.

With extracurricular activity being an important part of her school’s culture, it was a no-brainer to get involved.

“Hiking and camping in the Yorkshire Dales felt like a world away from the Bahrain desert,” Haniyah said. “The DofE International Award wasn’t especially popular at my school, but I decided to take it on anyway and completed both my Bronze and Silver Awards while living in Bahrain.

“I’d never been camping before, so even camping on our school pitch felt like a completely new experience. I later completed my Gold Award back in the UK, and hiking and camping in the Yorkshire Dales felt like a world away from Bahrain.

“I was relieved to discover that map reading on clear country paths was much easier than trying to navigate unfamiliar terrain – on my Silver Expedition, we got our bearings wrong and ended up in a military zone!”

For her skill section for her Bronze and Silver Awards, Haniyah joined the World Scholar’s Club, an international competition that involves debate, collaborative writing and group challenges. Her team won the global round in Dubai and travelled to Yale University in the USA for the final.

Then, for her Gold Skill section, she found another academic contest, Trade Quest, this time in a money management course, which ran in schools across Bahrain. In six months, she and her team learnt all about economics, the stock market and how to trade, coming third in the course competition.

Haniyah said “I’m so glad that my DofE pushed me into getting involved with this contest. I was leaning towards studying architecture at university, but I enjoyed the trading competition so much that I have changed my degree course to Economics and Finance. My teammates and I were even thinking about starting to trade stocks in real life.”

Back in the UK, Haniyah completed her Gold Residential section at Little Deer Wood Activity Centre in Mirfield, where she led activities like canoeing and art projects for disabled children. At school, she had worked with younger children, but accommodating a range of disabilities was a new challenge.

Haniyah said: “I’ve always been fairly comfortable working with younger children, but my residential was a real learning experience for me. I focused on making sure that all the children felt included and were enjoying themselves.”

Funded by The Gosling Foundation, the Youth Ambassador programme puts young people front and centre as future leaders, involving them in shaping the DofE’s work to benefit other young people.

DofE Youth Ambassadors have met Ministers and MPs, spoken at high-profile events such as party conferences and DofE Gold Award celebrations in Buckingham Palace Garden, represented the DofE at international forums and played a pivotal role feeding into key decisions across the charity.

Haniyah has already represented the DofE in her new role, attending the Labour Party Conference in September, calling on leading politicians to back an Enrichment Guarantee – 80 hours of high-quality enrichment activities per year for all young people, as part of the Government’s National Youth Strategy.

Ashley Williams, UK Youth Engagement Manager at The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, said:

“Haniyah has achieved incredible things through her DofE. As a charity, we’re committed to putting young people at the heart of everything we do and give them the opportunity to make a positive, lasting impact on the issues they are passionate about.

“I am excited to see the impact that our new cohort of Youth Ambassadors will make this year.

“It is a challenging time to be a young person, with cutbacks to youth services, rising living costs, and a mental health and school attendance crisis. Now more than ever, it’s crucial that all young people can access opportunities like the DofE, which let them have fun, grow their resilience and self-belief, and develop vital skills they can’t always get in the classroom.”

A record-breaking number of young people started their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award across the UK in 2024-25, with 572,802 young people actively taking part, 342,412 young people starting their Award – and participants contributing an astonishing 5.2 million hours of volunteering, with an estimated total value of £33.4 million.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award wants to see 1.6 million young people start their DofE by Spring 2026. It has launched ambitious projects to fund schools and community organisations in the UK’s most deprived areas to start offering the DofE, to expand into more prisons and young offender institutions, and to support more young people with additional needs and disabilities to achieve their DofE Awards.