Most people who completed their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh’s Award as a teenager probably have hazy, rose-tinted memories of putting up tents in the drizzle, getting lost and singing daft songs with friends to propel them up the hills. My memories are rather different – I had my four-month-old son with me.

I certainly didn’t plan to get pregnant at 16. The summer before I was due to go to sixth form, I dropped out of school, and moved out of my parents’ home in west London into temporary housing an hour and a half away. 

They were supportive but I needed to be independent. I was with my baby’s father, trying to make it work, but he didn’t live with me. A month after my 17th birthday, I gave birth to Luke.

I was besotted with him and tried my absolute best, but I was struggling; I had no idea what I was doing. Everything was a complete mess – I was living on my own, often on just £30 a week, and I hopped from place to place, first to a supported living hostel for parents, then into various flats. I moved around a lot in the first year of my son’s life.

When I was still pregnant with Luke, I was enrolled on a young mums project in Kensington and Chelsea, my home borough. It was a lifeline. Before I joined the group I was pretty lonely. 

I didn’t have any friends with children and the void between what my life had become and the one my old friends were still living was growing rapidly wider. Being around girls like me, who were either pregnant or had very young children, went some way to relieving the isolation.

When it was suggested we all sign up to take our Duke of Edinburgh’s Award together, I jumped at the chance. It might sound mad, the idea that at four months post-partum you would head off to spend the weekend hiking in the South Downs and sleeping in a Scout hut, but I honestly believe doing my Bronze Award saved me.

Through the programme I gained a sense of structure and purpose. Before that, I had felt pretty rudderless, sitting at home with a baby, but once a week I had to do an hour of volunteering, complete some form of exercise and learn a skill. 

The group of girls I did it with came to mean so much to me. The training weekends were physically tough, but at least we were together. The children came with us – I carried Luke on my back in a special rucksack during one of the expeditions. Then we’d put the babies to bed and stay up chatting. It felt like a holiday.

Later, I got a job as a youth worker off the back of my volunteering and by the time I was doing my Gold Award, when Luke was seven, I was a full-time professional youth worker and had a degree in youth work.

I’m 33 now and live with my wonderful husband Josh, who I met nine years ago. As well as Luke, who is 16, we have two other children, Maya, three, and JJ, one. It might sound far-fetched to say all the happiness and stability in my life is down to doing DofE all those years ago, but it gave me the confidence and the self-belief I was so lacking.

Luke is now the same age I was when I was pregnant with him, which means I have been a mother for more than half my life. For my Gold Award, we went to Holland on a cycling tour for our expedition and Luke remembers cycling around on his own bike and playing on the beach.

I look at him now, this independent teenager, and I can remember what it was like back then. At that time, most of my life felt chaotic, the future terrifyingly unknown, but in that moment it was just us. Somehow, I knew we’d be OK. And we are.

As told to Eleanor Steafel

How you can help 

The Duke of Edinburgh Award is one of four organisations supported by this year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal. The others are Dogs Trust, Maggie’s and Alzheimer’s Society. To make a donation, please visit the website.