Award Silver Level participant

My name is Ludo and I’m doing the Silver Award. This programme has made a major change in my life. Before I did not like to speak with people outside my residential care home because I thought that anybody who discovered my origins would have a negative impression about me.

Feeling alone

I was born into a poor family from Brasov. When I was three years old, I was sent to a residential home called a placement centre, because my mother died and my father had alcohol problems.

All my childhood I have lived with the feeling that I am alone in the entire world. The other children from the placement centre were my family. We ate from the same dish under the same roof. We were treated like thieves and told that our future would be in prison or on the streets.

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Award Gold Level participant

“Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, kachi, kyu, ju” … are the first words that I was proudly mumbling in Japanese at the age of 4, since then I first entered for the first time in the training gym. “OSS!” was how I saluted everyone, because I felt that it sounded different than “Buna ziua!”, but also because I was always told of the importance of respect. At the beginning everything was as a game, I wanted to be like the heroes from the movies, but with passing of the time I had realized that this sport was not just a simple sport, but a lifestyle. Why do I say this? Probably because many people, me as well, confuse karate with what it is seen in the movies, when in fact it is the contrary. Karate does not promote violence, but offers life lessons about what respect, trust and self-control represent.

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More than a quarter of us never step outside our comfort zone, new research from youth charity the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) has found.

This rises to one in three for over-55s. A further 32% of Brits admit they only challenge themselves once a year.

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