11 July 2024
Summary: Event marks one year of progress for The Royal Foundation's homeless initiative
MTVH’s Chief Executive, Geeta Nanda, celebrated one-year of progress of The Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s homelessness initiative, Homewards, at an event on 11th July which was addressed by the Prince of Wales. Partners and members of the programme’s National Expert Panel, of which Geeta is a member, were also in attendance.
The event marked a significant milestone for the five year programme which has spent its first year building vital partnerships across six locations in Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole, Lambeth, Newport, Northern Ireland and Sheffield to put these areas on a trajectory towards ending homelessness. Each of the six locations is developing an innovative, and tailored housing project aimed at testing new ways of providing homes at scale to help relieve homelessness in their localities.
Through building vital partnerships, bringing together hundreds of individuals and organisations from the public, private and third sectors, the first year of Homewards has laid the foundations for success and begun to generate real system change whilst placing those with lived experience of homelessness at its heart.
Homewards has gained support from a wide-range of businesses and industries in its first year, including The Pret Foundation, Homebase, Arup and Ikea. Thursday event also marked Knight Frank and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (‘Freshfields’) joining the programme.
Through improving understanding of homelessness and building optimism that it can be ended, Homewards is helping to change the narrative on this vital issue. The programme will launch an exhibition at the Saatchi gallery in London later this summer and will feature in a two-part ITV documentary in the autumn, exploring homelessness and following the initiative’s first year.
Over the next year, the Royal Foundation will work across the Homewards coalitions and partnerships to deliver on each location’s local action plan and priorities to turn them into a reality.