The Duchess of Sussex has launched her first solo charity project – a cookery book for Grenfell.
Since the beginning of the year Meghan has made private visits to meet those affected by last summer’s fire at Grenfell Tower.
One of the projects she has visited is a communal kitchen at the Al Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in west London, which has helped feed those who lost everything in the fire and provided a space where people can meet and talk.
Now Meghan has worked with them to produce a cook book, full of their own recipes, called Together: Our Community Cookbook.
It goes on sale online on Monday and will be available in book shops from Thursday.
The Duchess of Sussex has written the foreword saying: “I immediately felt connected to this community kitchen; it is a place for women to laugh, grieve, cry and cook together.
“Melding cultural identities under a shared roof, it creates a space to feel a sense of normalcy – in its simplest form, the universal need to connect, nurture, and commune through food, through crisis or joy – something we can all relate to…
“Through this charitable endeavour, the proceeds will allow the kitchen to thrive and keep the global spirit of community.”
At the moment the community kitchen has only been able to open two days a week because of a lack of funding, but the duchess hopes that money raised through the book will allow them to open for seven days a week for at least two years.
In the introduction, the women of the Hubb Community Kitchen wrote: “Our kitchen has always been a place of good food, love, support and friendship.
“We cook the recipes we’ve grown up with; there’s no stress, and the recipes always work because they have been made so many times – it’s proper comfort food…Swapping family recipes and moments of laughter gave us a sense of normality and home.
“We named ourselves the Hubb Community Kitchen to celebrate the thing that we all feel every time we meet – hubb means love in Arabic.”
A video released by Kensington Palace and narrated by the duchess shows the community kitchen in action and a glimpse of Meghan’s private visits to the project.
The Royal Foundation, the charitable trust set up by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, has already given the community kitchen a grant so it can be refurbished.
The foundation has also been working with groups around Grenfell to make sure young people are getting mental health support.
Before she met Prince Harry, Meghan regularly wrote about her keen interest in food and her commitment to causes around female empowerment and gender equality, on her Instagram account and her online blog The Tig.
From – SkyNews