PORTRAIT OF A DUCHESS IN TRAINING
Revealed, Meghan’s India charity trip before romance went public
SHE has embraced a wide range of charitable interests since becoming a member of the Royal Family.
But footage released for the first time yesterday shows the Duchess of Sussex on a mercy mission more than a year before her marriage to Prince Harry.
Meghan, 37, who is expecting her first baby within days, speaks directly to the camera on a charity visit to New Delhi in January 2017.
She was there on behalf of World Vision, an international children’s charity. Meghan, then still an actress in TV legal drama Suits, who had been dating the Queen’s grandson for six months, was highlighting the plight of girls whose education suffers when they are menstruating.
A global ambassador for the charity, she can be seen planting flowers and painting signs with girls at a school where World Vision installed clean water and sanitation facilities.
She also wears a sari to speak to local women m and has a bindi painted on her forehead. The footage ends with Meghan, surrounded by a group of schoolgirls and staff, shouting ‘girl power’ and making peace signs with her fingers.
When she returned, she wrote a piece for Time magazine and said: ‘One hundred and thirteen million adolescent girls between the ages of 12-14 in India alone are at risk of dropping out of school because of the stigma surrounding menstrual health.’
It is a cause she is expected to take up again, most likely through her work as a Commonwealth ambassador.