The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been named to this year’s Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people and feature on one of the covers for the annual issue.
Ranked amongst the year’s biggest icons, Harry and Meghan posed for a magazine cover and were the subject of an article by José Andrés, the founder of World Central Kitchen, a charity that has partnered with the couple’s Archewell Foundation.
“There’s a famous TV interview of Harry, the Duke of Sussex when he was an Apache helicopter gunner a few years ago. He’s sitting close to an airfield in Afghanistan, commenting on some royal news, when there’s a bang, and a group of soldiers scramble behind him,” writes Andrés.
“In one swift motion, he stands up, rips off his microphone and runs toward the action.”
Andrés writes that the same urgency drives Meghan and that “[s]pringing into action is not the easy choice for a young duke and duchess who have been blessed through birth and talent, and burned by fame. It would be much safer to enjoy their good fortune and stay silent.”
He continues: “That’s not what Harry and Meghan do or who they are. They turn compassion into boots on the ground through their Archewell Foundation. They give voice to the voiceless through media production. Hand in hand with nonprofit partners, they take risks to help communities in need—offering mental-health support to black women and girls in the U.S., and feeding those affected by natural disasters in India and the Caribbean.
“In a world where everyone has an opinion about people they don’t know, the duke and duchess have compassion for the people they don’t know. They don’t just opine. They run toward the struggle.”
The couple shared on their Archewell Foundation website that they were humbled to be included on the Time 100 list and revealed that they wrote an article about fellow honouree Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation.
