‘I slept rough with Prince William 15 years ago – here’s what we need to do now’
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Fifteen years ago the future king bedded down for a night on the street to highlight the plight of those with no roof over their heads. Now the youth homeless charity chief who joined Prince William shares the inside story – and offers his verdict on how to tackle the issue. With homelessness on the rise, Centrepoint CEO Seyi Obakin spoke to the Mirror a decade-and-a-half on from the night in London.
In 2009, the charity – which campaigns to end youth homelessness – marked its 40th anniversary. Mr Obakin recalled how patron Prince William was up for spending a night on the streets – so long as the charity boss joined him. “If I’m honest, I didn’t expect him to do exactly what he did,” Mr Obakin revealed. “At the time, Centrepoint had just started to get people to sleep out as a way of fundraising,” he said.
“So we just started to organise sleep out events. It wasn’t a lot of people but it was safe and secure for those people. It had to be cold and they had to sleep on the floor… it would be in a safe area where people wouldn’t be attacked.” Mr Obakin thought that might be what the then young Royal, now 42, might opt for – but what happened was rather different.
The CEO explained: “What he said was, ‘look… actually, if I’m going to do it, I want it to be authentic, I want to have as close…[to] what the experience of a young person who is homeless would have…’” Beforehand, the night was a guarded secret. “The only people who knew this was going to happen was me, him, his private secretary at the time and his PPO at the time,” Mr Obakin explained. “Only four of us knew, nobody else.”.
