Prince William celebrates Homewards initiative anniversary

Royal Family Channel

Prince William marked the first year of his Homewards initiative by returning to the London Borough of Lambeth where he launched it. In a speech he reiterated his belief that homelessness can be ended and said the ideas and approaches being developed in the six target areas “will have the power to inspire change across the UK and beyond”. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00Good morning, how can we be of service to you, to you, to you, to you, yes?

00:09Hello, nice to see you.

00:11Thank you for coming all the way down.

00:13Well, we've left the bar to run up here.

00:24How are you? Nice to see you again.

00:26Former team.

00:28How are you?

00:31Nice to meet you.

00:33Very nice to meet you.

00:35Sometimes I feel it takes the visibility of it.

00:37You deal with this every day.

00:39You're in the weeds, every day having to fight this.

00:41Lots of businesses, organisations, who care about it but don't know where to start.

00:49And you help get people involved with the University of Sunderland as well.

00:52Absolutely, yeah.

00:53How has Homewards helped those relationships?

00:57Who wants to start?

01:14For me, it's fantastic to be back in Lambeth, where a year ago, I can't believe,

01:18we launched Homewards and began our journey of working together

01:21to demonstrate that it is possible to end homelessness.

01:25Homelessness is a complex societal issue

01:28and one that touches the lives of far too many people in our society.

01:32However, I truly believe that it can be ended.

01:35I created Homewards because I wanted us to look at the issue of homelessness

01:39through a different lens.

01:41To inspire a movement to prevent people from ever experiencing homelessness

01:45in the first place.

01:47I know this will take a huge effort

01:49and I know that demonstrating that homelessness is not an inevitable part of our society

01:54will take time.

01:56I have, though, been struck by the scale of the work

01:58that has been carried out since the launch of Homewards

02:01and I hope it is a powerful reminder to everyone

02:04of what can be achieved when we work together towards a shared goal.

02:08Over the past 12 months, across our six locations,

02:11an incredible amount of work has been done

02:13to build the foundations for success.

02:16Coalitions have been built,

02:18bringing together over 500 individuals and organisations

02:22who are setting ambitious priorities

02:24and co-developing new ways of addressing homelessness

02:27that are local, relevant and collaborative,

02:30something that has never been done before on this scale.

02:3311 industry-leading companies have joined our mission,

02:37providing in-kind support and expertise to support our six locations.

02:42To them, I say thank you.

02:44To those who are not yet involved, I urge you to come and join us on this journey.

02:49Already a pipeline of nearly 100 homes is being established

02:51through the innovative housing projects,

02:53which will be developed in each location

02:55and, believe me, my ambitions alone mean there will be so many more.

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