Prince Harry and Meghan Markle recently stepped out in what appears to be their first public charitable appearance since the coronavirus lockdown began. Harry and Meghan visited a bakery in their new hometown of Los Angeles to work alongside former gang members and volunteers who were preparing meals to distribute in the community.
The bakery is a part of Homeboy Industries, which is the largest gang rehab and re-entry program in the world. The organization has been going strong in Los Angeles for over 30 years.
Homeboy Industries provides support to people through job training and free services such as tattoo removal, mental health services, GED classes, legal services, and more. It also provides what it calls “radical compassion,” and by all accounts does great work in the community.
Homeboy Industries shared a group photo of its workers on Instagram, with Harry and Meghan standing alongside them wearing masks and hairnets. It seems that Harry and Meghan got right in there and helped with meal prep. The organization has been providing meals to seniors and youth across Los Angeles during the coronavirus pandemic.
The caption for the photo reads: “Thank you to Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, for visiting and standing in kinship with our Café and Bakery teams yesterday!
Our staff was thrilled to work alongside them as they helped prepare food and learned more about our newly launched #FeedHOPE program, which employs our program participants to provide meals to food-insecure seniors and youth across Los Angeles in the wake of the #COVID19 pandemic.”
Pictures showed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle helping to bake bread, folding dough, and putting food boxes together. We should note, too, that Homeboy Industries is run by Father Gregory Boyle, whom Meghan first met 20 years ago at a Homeboy Industry cooking workshop. Meghan and her mother Doria Ragland made tamales there.
Father Boyle said that the couple was simply “Harry and Meghan” while they were on the scene, and that they “rolled up their sleeves and deeply engaged” with the workers. Father Boyle said that ‘it was immediate kinship and heartening in its mutuality.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were described by the staff as “down to earth and kind” during the visit, and staff were said to have been honored to work alongside the couple. At any rate, it’s great to see Harry and Meghan getting out and making their presence known in their new community. Stick with CDL for all your British royals updates and news.
