The princess was a part of 109 charities and her philanthropy included everyone from sex workers to homeless Londoners.
Princess Diana was an active philanthropist who went above and beyond for the welfare of people.
She knew that the only thing people really wanted was to love and be loved. In fact, according to Global Citizen, she once said, “I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give. I am very happy to do that, I want to do that.”
The Princess of Wales used to go around London to perform random acts of kindness for people who were not that privileged. Diana's one-time butler, Paul Burrell, even recalled how she would sometimes drive around and meet sex workers, per Arizona Daily Sun.
"The princess became on first-name terms with two or three of them … She would give them money, especially when it was cold and wet, and tell them to go home," Burrell said. Once Diana reportedly gave a sex worker money to buy a coat to brave the cold, "and she was annoyed that whenever she saw the girl afterward she was not wearing the coat so that she had obviously spent the money on something else," Burrell reportedly said.
She didn't just stop at helping sex workers, her philanthropy extended to homeless Londoners, as well. Darren McGrady, Diana's personal chef, told USA Today how she once anonymously distributed blankets during a cold winter night. "Princess Diana was a patron of 109 charities, and I saw the difference she made," he said.
"I once overheard her saying to the butler that she wanted 50 blankets. It was the middle of winter and cold and miserable outside."
He replied, "Your Royal Highness, we can turn the heating up if you want." She said she had just been driving through King's Cross and saw homeless people going through trash bins looking for cardboard boxes to keep them warm. So she got these blankets and drove back to King's Cross and she pulled up at all these trash bins in the area and put a couple of blankets in each one in the hope that people would find them."
"That's what inspired me, and people around the world, about her. The difference she could make just by doing a little bit of charity. It's why I now work with homeless shelters and domestic violence shelters, why I speak in public about her, and why I donated all the royalties from my first book to charity. I hope that by listening to fun stories about her I can encourage others to do something, to be kind."
References:
https://www.globalcitizen.org/es/content/diana-20-years-anniversary-inspiring-quotes-global/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Princess Diana Archive
