Kate Middleton Launches New Taskforce to Support Early Childhood Mission: 'It Really Does Take a Village'
Kate Middleton is widening her mission for children. The Princess of Wales, 41, is focusing on business and finance leaders in the next stage of her campaign to highlight the importance of the early years. After working with academic and mental health experts over the last decade, Princess Kate is now including business professionals. On Tuesday morning, she stepped out at NatWest bank's London headquarters for the first meeting of her new Business Taskforce for Early Childhood. The new group follows the January launch of her Shaping Us campaign to take what has been an area of scientific and academic interest into a "strategically important" one. Kate, who wore a white blazer (by Alexander McQueen, her wedding gown designer!) with trousers for the meeting, believes that early childhood holds a key to people's long-term health and well-being. She hopes the Business Taskforce will play an essential role in her work to transform the way society prioritizes and supports children and their environments in the earliest years, her office at Kensington Palace says. Giving a speech at the event, Kate spoke about how the first five years of a child's life are critical to lay the building blocks for life, but their environment plays a huge role in that development. "This, however, is not just about supporting children in the earliest years of their lives. It is also about building healthy communities in which they can grow. Because the healthy development of our children relies on healthy adults. So this is why we all have a part to play," she said. "And that is why I'm standing here in front of you, to ask you, some of Britain's most influential business leaders, for your support in helping create the societal change that is needed." Princess Kate continued, "I have spoken before about the need to make early childhood the societal equivalent of climate change. In the way that the business world has embraced the net zero target to protect our environmental ecosystems, you also have an important role to play in ensuring that our social ecosystems are protected too. Your business organizations are living examples of these social ecosystems, so building healthy environments both in and out of the workplace is fundamental."
Via: People
