Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are being honored for their work in humanitarianism at a gala tonight in New York City, which some may find surprising, but that’s because they’ve been doing the work quietly, says one royal expert.
The Sussexes are scheduled to swing by Spring Studios in Lower Manhattan to accept their award from Project Healthy Minds, who they’ve partnered with before, co-hosting a summit on mental health in 2023. In addition to the big night out, the Duke and Duchess will be speaking at an all-day festival tomorrow, also at Spring Studios, as part of World Mental Health Day.
As we head into the two-day event, it seemed like a good idea to check-in with royal expert Pauline Maclaran to get a gauge on what to expect.
Maclaran, co-author of Royal Fever and professor at Royal Holloway, thinks the award is a good fit, that Harry and Meghan have earned the award, but there will most likely be some pushback from critics.
The royal expert said: “I think Harry and Meghan probably have earned this award. It seems they have been working fairly quietly in the background on projects that have not necessarily been heavily publicized.”
In terms of pushback, it kind of comes with the territory when you’re a public figure, but at the same time, Harry and Meghan have a number of projects going on at one time with Maclaran saying some pursuits get more attention than others.
She explained: ”“Most certainly there will be much criticism of this award because they are often in the news for other reasons – take for example, Meghan’s attendance at the Paris Fashion Week or Harry’s security issues – and these are the aspects that dominate meaning that their good works are often overlooked.”
She added: “I think their humanitarian aspects have been somewhat overshadowed as in the above examples, but also with Meghan’s focus on her Netflix series and its merchandising.”
At the same time, it does depend on whose looking, it seems like the American public and British public have different feelings about the Duke and Duchess.
“For sure, the British public are more critical of the couple but they do seem to receive a lot of criticism too in the US. However, the couple certainly have strong followings among younger generations both in the US and Britain.”
It seems like critiscm has been light, which may because of the nature of the topic that the gala and festival are to support those who struggle with mental health issues as part of World Mental Health Day, which was first observed in 1992.
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It did make us wonder, once Harry and Meghan accept this award, if there’s anything they can do to live up to being Humanitarians of the Year, in which we asked Maclaran about, if she has any advice for the royal couple.
According to Maclaran, it’s hard for them to prove themselves as advocates because the focus is on their lives as celebrities versus foregrounding the humanitarian works that they are doing.
She said: “There is no doubt they have done a lot of work in respect of young people’s mental health and the online environment, but we don’t hear much about it.”
While Harry and Meghan are no longer senior working members of the Royal Family, they are still members of the Royal Family, but it seems that they are so removed that this award does not reflect on the monarchy.
Maclaran explained: “I think most people separate them now from the British monarchy, so I don’t think this has any kind of halo effect for the other royals.”
We reached out to Project Healthy Minds to see if its founder would be interested in setting up a Zoom call to discuss all the great things the nonprofit is doing and how they decided on Harry and Meghan as their honorees, but we did not receive a response to our email.
We mentioned this to Maclaran when going over the Sussexes’ humanitarian efforts, and she had an idea of why the organization chose the Duke and Duchess.
“Of course associating with Harry and Meghan will gain it lots of attention and brand recognition so the award is likely to be highly strategic from the charity’s side!”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-express.com ’
