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Prince & Princess of Wales

The Princess of Wales chats early years with big business

Catherine, The Princess of Wales speaks about her early years project, Shaping Us, on visit to Leeds

The Princess of Wales spent the weekend advocating her new Business Taskforce for Early Childhood, speaking with the chief executive of Iceland Food and writing an opinion piece in the Financial Times.

In a six-minute video shared on the official social media channels, Catherine chatted with Richard Walker about how businesses can play a part in the early years.

Catherine says: “You hear time and time again that these soft skills, you know, the creativity, the collaboration, the critical thinking, the flexibility, the resilience. You know, these are things that you’d hear that businesses are looking for, and it’s really interesting seeing how, actually, so often, the foundations for those skills are built in the earliest years of our lives.”

The conversation was filmed in Iceland’s warehouse in Aylesbury, and Catherine was shown the new emoji posters that are displayed at checkouts for young kids to discuss their feelings.

Walker said, “Looking at the Shaping Us campaign and reading some of the science behind it, it really challenged my thinking and it made me think what more we can do, personally as a parent, but also actually as a business.”

Catherine also wrote an opinion piece for the Financial Times called “Investing in early childhood is a down payment on all our futures.”

In it, she argues for businesses and companies to be at the forefront of advocating for societal changes, as the statistics for working parents are high in the United Kingdom: 76 per cent of mothers and 92 per cent of fathers work and raise families.

The science is there to support the vital nature of the early years, she argues. And businesses play a unique role in ensuring that changes are made since they can not only later their own business structures but can also reach out through their wider networks.

About author

Jess Ilse is the Assistant Editor at Royal Central. She specialises in the British, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Royal Families and has been following royalty since Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. Jess has provided commentary for media outlets in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Jess works in communications and her debut novel THE MAJESTIC SISTERS is now available.