Focus
A statement from Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Private Secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry about Prince Harry's forthcoming trip to New York
1st June 2010
A statement from Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Private Secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry:
As many of you will recall, in May last year, Prince Harry undertook his first ever public overseas trip, to New York City, where he participated in a polo match on behalf of his charity Sentebale and he visited, amongst other things, a Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan and a children’s college in Harlem. The Prince was accompanied for part of the visit by Marine Joe Townsend, a wounded Afghanistan veteran.
Prince Harry is delighted that he will have the opportunity to return to New York from 25th to 27th June to build on some of the relationships he made last year, particularly in respect of Armed Forces veterans. Prince Harry is especially keen to explore what can be done to help veterans charities on both sides of the Atlantic work better together, learning from one another in their mission to support returning wounded Servicemen and women.
As Prince Harry knows very well for himself, US and British soldiers, sailors and airmen fight together daily on the frontline in Afghanistan. Tragically, all too often, they are also wounded together, and their immediate treatment in theatre is very often undertaken using shared resources. But their contact with one another normally ceases when they get back to their respective countries for the long months and years of rehabilitation, sometimes into a new life away from the friendships they have built up in the armed forces. As any soldier, or charity worker in this field will tell you, rehabilitation within one’s peer group is a key component of success. Prince Harry wants to explore what, if anything, can be done to strengthen and widen the Transatlantic peer group, to help through the exchange of ideas and techniques, and basic camaraderie, the wounded Servicemen and women of both countries to regain confidence and set themselves on the path to recovery and a full and satisfying future.
I must stress at this point that Prince Harry knows that there are no quick fix or easy answers to achieve this ambitious goal. The Prince will be accompanied during parts of his visit by two young British officers who were wounded on operations, but who have since devoted themselves to improving the lot of their fellow wounded Servicemen and women in the UK. These two individuals will spend the weekend in New York meeting some key contacts from the US military charities field to see what lessons can be learned from the US way of doing things, and to foster the widening of the rehabilitation peer group, as I mentioned before.
So, Prince Harry’s itinerary in New York this year will reflect, in large part, his and his brother’s commitment to their fellow Servicemen, with visits to the US military and meetings with veterans’ charities. But his visit to New York will also reflect his ongoing commitment to his own charity, Sentebale. The Prince is very much looking forward to returning to play in this year’s Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic on behalf of the American Friends of Sentebale (the same polo match that he played in last year.) The money raised at this match will go directly to help some of the most vulnerable children on earth. This will seem all the more immediate this year given that, only a little over one week before this polo match, The Prince will have had a chance to return to Lesotho to meet the Basutho children whose plight the extraordinary work of Sentebale is helping to ease.
Briefly, if I may, I will touch on Prince Harry’s travel arrangements. Prince Harry will be flying on scheduled flights to and from New York and he will be staying with the British Consul-General, as he did last year. Costs will be kept, as ever, to an absolute minimum, and The Prince will be accompanied by one member of his Household and one, possibly two, press officers.