Charity Engagement Yesterday

[AshTreesEverywhere]

The Royal Family attend public engagements that are jollies such as Film Premiers and Wold Cup Finals. But yesterday William and Kate visited a Food Bank. So what did this work involve?

William and Kate travelled 10-15 minutes to the Windsor Foodshare, a food bank. They played around with a shopping cart and cracked “jokes” about who was being more useful (neither). They met with some of the food bank workers and barely spent an hour on this photo-op.

That is one of their average 150 engagements a year.

Good to hear - these organisations definitely need more exposure. Thanks for sharing.

😆

“The Prince and Princess of Wales visited a food bank in their local area, and which their children’s school supports, in order to thank the Volunteers for their great work. All present really enjoyed the experience and the food bank achieved some priceless exposure by way of being shown on prime time TV”

There you go OP, fixed it for you.

It's sad that foodbanks are necessary. Well done to them for highlighting the good work those volunteers do 👏🏻

Well done to them. Great they're highlighting it

I think that’s exactly the sort of thing they should be doing and about the right length of time.

Also, are you sure it's 150 engagements? That seems like a lot to me - I know this was a quick one close to home, but if you allow an average of 1.5 days per engagement for strategy and planning, prep, travel to engagement, do the engagement, travel back from engagement and debrief, that's 225 days / 45 weeks full time per year. Which gives them an ok holiday allowance but no time at all for other stuff like longer term projects, ceremonial events, the business side, the constitutional side, foreign tours, Kate's planning of which designers she should be promoting plus fittings etc. And it assumes they are both working full time with small children which I suspect is unlikely and would probably be unwise, given that they are preparing the children for a very particular life, which can go quite wrong. Hard to do that while they're cleaning their teeth and you've just dashed in from an engagement.

One of the main points of royal visits is to highlight the work of the visited organisation. From the reports they did this with grace and good humour and the visit was enjoyed by those present. Good job well done.

What does it matter that they only travelled 15 minutes? Surely it makes sense to visit such a charity in their home town? Would you have been happier if they'd visited a food bank in Inverness?

Given that you heard about it, they presumably also attracted the local press and news channels, giving the food bank extra coverage.

It will probably have cheered up the volunteers and the users who will have had their photos taken with the royal couple, and will now have circulated their photos on social media, giving further coverage to the food bank.

Go back to the food bank in a week and ask them how much their donations have risen since.

They stayed less than an hour, they didn't 'volunteer', they packed a few things in boxes for the photo op, they chatted and joked, they didn't donate anything, then they left.
All with 2 security, 4 staff and 2 cars.

The papers report it as them putting a shift in at the Foodbank. Putting a shift in means doing hours of packing boxes, not 20 minutes.

Why could they not have donated food from Windsor Farm shop, which stocks goods from the Royal Estate and Duchy of Cornwall?

I will accept it was a boost for the volunteers to see them, but really... why doesn't one of them pledge to do a proper shift once a week. Now that would be something I would praise.

It's a bit hypocritical to me. A wealthy family lauding the volunteers at a food bank that shouldn't exist in this day and age in a First World Country.

'why doesn't one of them pledge to do a proper shift once a week? Now that would be something I would praise.'

Because any predictable regular engagement is a security risk, and would cost a small fortune to arrange safely.

And because the novelty value is what attracts the additional coverage & donations. If it happened every week, it wouldn't be news.

😂😂😂 No, I don’t think they are!

I haven't said the same time every week. Random. Easily done.

The existence of food banks in a highly developed country is not necessary something to applaud, but the volunteers who work there and the donors who support them do deserve recognition.

That's their job...to give their support (and the media coverage which follows them) to worthy causes. Struggling to see the issue here?

I don't think you are reading my post properly. Windsor Farm shop which is stocked by the Royal Estate, Duchy of Cornwall etc... they could have prepared some donations to distribute to the foodbank. It would not have cost them anything and I find it bizarre that one of the richest people in the country turns up at a foodbank empty handed.

Surely that isn't a serious suggestion? Their value isn't in packing boxes, something anyone could do. It's in raising awareness and giving exposure, so that more people volunteer and more people donate. If this visit increases the number of volunteers and donations that's worth much more than one shift per week with no news coverage.

Princess Diana used to volunteer and do a proper shift.

'I haven't said the same time every week. Random. Easily done.'

No, because regardless of time of visit, if the royals are in the building every week, it becomes a target. It would have to be checked regularly for explosives etc. Routes would become known. Volunteers and users would have to be vetted.

Doing single random visits all over the country removes the opportunity for anyone to plan an attack.

I'm glad you're not in charge of security 😀