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Prince Harry on His Charity Work: “I Want to Do Something That Makes My Mother Proud”
Nearly 20 years after Princess Diana‘s tragic death, the late royal’s son Prince Harry continues to carry on her special legacy of charity work.
“I want to do something that makes my mother proud,” Harry, 32, said in a recent interview for the ITV documentary Prince Harry in Africa. “Lucky for me I’ve got the prince bit so I’m able to make a difference.”
Harry first began following in his mom’s philanthropic footsteps in 2006 when he co-founded Sentebale, an organization to support children affected by HIV and AIDS in Africa.
Diana, Harry and William in April 1993.
He’s now celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Sentebale — which means “forget me not” in the African language Sesotho — which he established in Diana’s memory.
“I now view life very differently from what it used to be. I need to make something of my life. I’m so energized. I want to do something really constructive,” he said.
Diana — who shared Harry and her older son, Prince William, with husband Prince Charles — sadly died at age 36 in an August 1997 car crash in Paris. Harry was just 12-years-old at the time of his mother’s passing.
“I never really dealt with what had happened. It was a lot of buried emotion,” he said of Diana’s death in the ITV documentary. “For a huge part of my life I didn’t really want to think about it.”
Harry visiting Lesotho, Africa in February 2013.
“I used to bury my head in the sand, and let everything around [me] tear [me] to pieces,” he continued.
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William, 34, has similarly opened up about grieving Diana’s passing. “Time makes it easier… I still miss my mother every day — and it’s 20 years after she died,” he said during an August 2016 visit to Keech Hospice in Luton, England.
“The important thing is to talk about it as a family,” William — who is father to Prince George, 3, and Princess Charlotte, 1, with wife Kate Middleton — said. “It’s OK to feel sad. It’s OK [to miss your loved ones].”
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