Prince William and Queen Camilla joined forces on Wednesday as both senior royals highlighted the issue of homelessness through their engagements. Just days after attending the first royal wedding of the year, that of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling in Gloucestershire, the Prince of Wales and the Queen carried out separate engagements focused on tackling homelessness.
William's Tech Initiative
William attended London Tech Week at Kensington Olympia on June 10 where he took part in a Homewards panel discussion and urged technology leaders and businesses to use data and innovation to help identify people at risk of homelessness before it occurs. The engagement marked the launch of the UK’s first Homelessness Data Lab, a new initiative led by Homewards in partnership with Salesforce and LandAid, supported by Bloomberg, Vodafone, Three, Accenture, NatWest Group and others.
William’s Homewards programme aims to make homelessness "rare, brief and unrepeated" for those affected and has partnered with London Tech Week to bring technology from the private sector with charitable organisations, The Mirror reports. William said at the event that data already collected through everyday services could play a key role in preventing homelessness.
The new Homelessness Data Lab will examine data to identify early indicators that someone may be at risk of losing their home, including missed bill payments, disconnected phone services or prolonged school absences. The aim is to enable earlier intervention and help prevent homelessness before it reaches crisis point. According to Homewards, more than 430,000 people across Britain are currently affected by homelessness.
William's Speech
Prince William told the tech conference: "The earlier you deal with a problem, the better, as we all know in life. There's no one problem that fixes homelessness. It's multifaceted; it's many different things. Many of your customers, your clients, will be using data through banking apps, through their phones. I'm not sure you realise how much that data can be used to predict and see problems with potential homelessness before they actually arise." He added: "Homelessness is not inevitable. It’s entirely preventable. You guys in this room, the tech world is a huge part of this puzzle."
Camilla's Charity Visit
Also on Wednesday, Queen Camilla visited St Mungo's Community Housing Association in south London, where she met staff and residents and learned more about the charity's work supporting people experiencing homelessness. Queen Camilla donated a collection of 20 books based on a ‘Book Menu’ to suit the residents' interests and reading levels. The books are all previous reads from her book club, and include well known works such as Wuthering Heights and War Horse.
During the visit, Camilla described reading as "a wonderful form of escapism." She said: "Thank you for having me today. I am so glad that my reading room and St Mungo’s are working together and getting people reading. I hope the books I’ve brought today, I hope a lot of people will read them and get interested. As we know, books do so much for people, it is a wonderful way of escapism and taking them out of their life and into another one. So thank you for all you are doing."
