The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be accompanying the Queen next week as she hosts a reception at Buckingham Palace to present the Queen’s Young Leaders 2018 awards.
Now in its fourth and final year, the Queen’s Young Leaders programme celebrates the achievements of exciting young change-makers from across the Commonwealth.
This year’s selection of winners are from across 38 countries and are all working to improve the lives of people across a range of issues. This includes supporting people living with mental health problems, access to education, promoting gender equality, food scarcity and climate change.
There will be several famous guests at the reception, including comedian Sir Lenny Henry, footballer David Beckham, boxer Nicola Adams, YouTuber Caspar Lee, television presenter Ore Oduba and journalist Tina Daheley. The Chairman of The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, Sir John Major, will also be attending the event.
In the week leading up to the reception, the winners will travel to the UK to participate in a programme of training, mentoring and networking opportunities. This includes a visit to No. 10, the UK headquarters of Facebook, the BBC World Service, and workshops at the University of Cambridge.
The Queen’s Young Leaders programme was launched in 2014 in honour of the Queen’s lifetime service to the Commonwealth having first become the Head of the Commonwealth when she was 26-years-old.
It was established by The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust in partnership with Comic Relief, the Royal Commonwealth Society and the University of Cambridge.
The Commonwealth is a global network of 53 countries and 2.4 billion people, of whom 60% are under 30-years-old. In April 2018, the Duke of Sussex was appointed a Commonwealth Youth Ambassador by the Queen.
The first round of the Queen’s Young Leaders was launched by the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex in 2014. Each year from then, 60 young people were selected to receive a Queen’s Young Leader Award and become ‘Queen’s Young Leaders’.
The goal of the programme is to enable young people to step up as leaders and improve the lives of people across the Commonwealth.
