Meghan’s wedding gift to women’s health charity

WHEN Meghan Markle returned from a visit to a charity based in the slums of Mumbai, she urged the world to sit up and take note of the problems facing young girls there, imploring: “We need to push the conversation.”

By including the Myna Mahila Foundation, which focuses on breaking taboos surrounding menstrual hygiene, among the seven charities she and Prince Harry have chosen to benefit from donations in lieu of wedding gifts, she has done just that.

Most of the charities picked by the couple are small, little known organisations including a Bristol-based children’s HIV charity with just four part-time employees and a charity for bereaved Armed Forces children.

Kensington Palace said the couple did not have any formal relationships with the seven charities but wanted to

‘Girls’ potential is being squandered because we are too shy to talk about the most natural thing in the world’

choose those which represent a range of issues they are passionate about.

Another of the charities is Scotty’s Little Soldiers, inspired by Nikki Scott, whose husband Cpl Lee Scott, was killed in Afghanistan, and supports children who have lost a parent while serving in the British Armed Forces.

Also included is the Children’s HIV Association and Surfers Against Sewage, a marine conservation charity.

Ms Markle visited Mumbai last January, a couple of months after rumours about her relationship with the Prince began to gain traction, and wrote about the experience for Time magazine.

“One hundred and thirteen million adolescent girls between the ages of 1214 in India alone are at risk of dropping out of school because of the stigma surrounding menstrual health,” she wrote.

“Young girls’ potential is being squandered because we are too shy to talk about the most natural thing in the world.”

♦ Barriers to hold back the world’s media and parking restrictions were put in place yesterday outside the Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital in central London, where the Duchess of Cambridge is due to give birth in a matter of weeks.