For over fifty years, The Duke of Edinburgh's Award has been challenging young people from all walks of life, around the world, to strive for personal excellence whilst engaging meaningfully with their community. Despite the plethora of youth development programs and initiatives around the world, it is widely believed that there is no other program like The Duke of Edinburgh's Award. There is a relative paucity of literature exploring the theoretical underpinnings of how The Award program fosters youth development. belief. These tools, used in conjunction with the program's open structure, breadth of in-built choice and flexibility, openness of completion timeline, recognition of participation in other programs, as well as its applicability to all young people (aged 14-25), define a program that can overlay almost every context in which young people engage. The Duke of Edinburgh's Award was created based on the theories of experiential educational philosopher Kurt Hahn (Wainwright, 1966; Lovegrove, 1964). At the heart of his mission, Hahn sought to develop stronger leadership qualities to address issues such as isolation, apathy, and alienation, by-products of modern day individualism (Scippa, 1999). This paper will explore these theoretical underpinnings, present a case study of The Award in the Tertiary sector and argue that for The Awardto be successful in any context, there needs to be support, enthusiasm and positive leadership from adult mentors as well as those at every level of the relevant institution or organisation.