A million youngsters could need 'urgent help' to protect their futures, warns Prince Charles
One million young people could need “urgent help” to protect their futures from the coronavirus pandemic, the Prince of Wales has warned, as he said the “enormous challenges” testing society are reminiscent of the Seventies.
The Prince said the country has never faced a more “uniquely challenging” time, with the “destructive hopelessness” of unemployment looming once again.
Writing exclusively in The Telegraph, he said the young in particular now need “urgent help” to protect them from the worst effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, but warned society must not let optimism “drown beneath a deluge” of negative economic news.
Saying it is “all too easy to assume that nothing can be done”, he echoed the inspiring message of the Queen in April to pledge: “The task ahead is unquestionably vast, but it is not insurmountable.”
The Prince’s own charity, The Prince’s Trust, has just helped its millionth young person. “Over all these years since the Trust was launched, there has never been an easy time,” the Prince writes.
“However, there has never been a time as uniquely challenging as the present, when the pandemic has left perhaps another million young people needing urgent help.”
Reflecting on how he founded the charity in 1976, with his Royal Navy severance pay, the Prince said: “I am old enough to remember other times when hope was scarce and pessimism seemed the only thing in abundant supply.
“In the mid-Seventies, when I left the Royal Navy, youth unemployment was one of the pressing issues of the time. It seemed to me that we should do something to try to make a difference, however small.”
Research from the trust has shown 55 per cent of people aged 16 to 25 are more worried about being unemployed than they were a year ago.
The Prince, who contracted coronavirus himself in March, has previously warned it is essential to “prevent this crisis from defining the prospects of a generation”.
“When faced with enormous challenges to our society and with deep uncertainty about the future, it can be all too easy to assume that nothing can be done,” the Prince writes.
“Sometimes, it seems that any optimism is drowned beneath a deluge of negative economic information and daunting employment statistics.
“For anyone, this is a difficult time – but it is a particularly difficult time to be young.”
