Young Cavers Award

The SUI welcomes the contribution of younger cavers to the caving community and is delighted to announce the Young Cavers Award to support expeditionary caving by younger cavers!

For more details on all our funding opportunities please see our Funding Opportunities page

Criteria for the young cavers award. 

i) Age 18-25 years

ii) Has been a member of an SUI affiliated club for 1 year or more.

iii) This is the caver’s first or second expedition. 

Award mechanism. 

i) The expedition leader nominates people for the young cavers award, as part of an overall Expedition Grant application. Include a ‘YCA’ nominee flag in the ‘expedition members’ section against the names of the people you are submitting for the award. Include all expedition members ages, so we can verify this criteria has been met.

ii) As part of the Grant application, include a section at the end of the application. In this section,  the young cavers being nominated will submit a short (10-20 lines) personal statement detailing their caving experience, their interest in the expedition and their personal goals that they want to achieve as part of the expedition. 

iii) The young cavers must provide 1 to 2 referees who are SUI members, who we can contact. 

Restrictions.

i) The award is €250 each.

ii) Each expedition can nominate between 1 and 4 individuals per expedition.

iii) A caver can only receive the award once.

Report Submission

The expedition report should include a personal diary / reflection write up of 1 caving trip done by each awardee. Ideally this write up would be of the most challenging trip the awardee undertook on the expedition. This write up should be between 1-4 pages long, depending on the complexity of the trip. 

Please make any expedition submissions to expedition@caving.ie