(Centrepoint) In this image made available by the Charity Centrepoint in London, Tuesday Dec. 22, 2009, Britain's Prince William and Centrepoint CEO Seyi Obakin prepare for a night sleeping rough in freezing temperatures in central London, Tuesday Dec. 15, 2009. The Prince bedded down in a sleeping bag next to a group of wheelie bins around Blackfriars Bridge, sleeping rough to experience being homeless, in an event organised by the homeless charity Centrepoint.
Prince William Spends a Night on the Streets
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DECEMBER 22, 2009
Seyi Obakin, Centrepoint

At a dinner Prince William attended in March 2009 to support Centrepoint, the Prince, our patron, threw down the gauntlet for us to work towards ending youth homelessness by our 50th anniversary. In accepting that challenge, I invited him to share, for one night, the experience a young person sleeping rough on the streets of London might have. It did not occur to me that he would pick up that gauntlet. But he did! He was determined, as he has always been, to understand deeply the full range of problems a homeless young person might face.
And so it was that on the eve of our 40th anniversary (on the night of 15th December 2009), I found myself accompanying Prince William and his private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, as we bedded down for the night on cardboard boxes around Blackfriars bridge, London. For me, it was a scary experience. Out of my comfortable bed. Out there in the elements. Out there on an extremely cold night, with temperatures down to minus 4oC. And it was the same for Prince William. But he was determined to do it as Patron in order to raise awareness of the problem and to be able to understand a little better what rough sleepers go through night after night.
We took as much precaution as possible – finding a relatively secluded spot in an alleyway, shielded partly by a collection of wheelie bins. But there was no shielding from the bitter cold, or the hard concrete floor, or the fear of being accosted by drug dealers, pimps or those out to give homeless people a good kicking. One of the hairiest moments occurred when we were almost run over by a road sweeper which simply didn’t see our small group huddled together, which just goes to show how vulnerable rough sleepers are. I have never been happier to welcome the break of dawn!
At dawn, Prince William and I walked with another colleague through some of the streets of the West End so he could see with his own eyes many of the invisible men and women who are rough sleepers in the buzzing centre of London. Prince William understood, as I did, that what he experienced was but a fraction of what it means to be truly homeless and afflicted. He knew that a young homeless person who has to sleep rough will not then have in the morning the choices we had in Centrepoint’s Greek Street hostel – a warm shower, a change of clothes, a decent breakfast. Homeless young people often face terrible dependency problems with drugs or alcohol, mental illness, poverty, family breakdown and many other issues, all of which are experiences that we simply cannot begin to share after sleeping rough for just one night. But sleeping rough for the night brought home, as no ‘story-telling’ can possibly do, the nightmare and incredible vulnerability of being homeless night after night.
Read the rest of this story on the Centrepoint website: www.centrepoint.org.uk/