Following the Red Nose Day appeal which saw Prince William in conversation with Groundswell volunteer reporters Miles and Nawshin on their ‘Listen Up! podcast, the full episode has been released discussing the issues around homelessness and how listening to stories can challenge misconceptions.
Listen Up! to our podcast below or listen on Spotify, alternatively search ‘Listen Up! Podcast: Volunteer Reporters Miles and Nawshin chat to Prince William’.
[Picture: Volunteer reporters Miles & Nawshin talk to Prince William. Photo credit Comic Relief / Daniel Loveday]
For this year’s Red Nose Day with Comic Relief Prince William featured in an appeal film with Miles and Nawshin, two volunteer reporters from homelessness charity Groundswell. The full podcast episode has been released today, where we can hear Prince William talk about how grateful he is to have been exposed to the issue of homelessness from a young age as it has allowed him to hear directly from people experiencing homelessness. The Prince highlighted how he hopes that podcast listeners will take the time to Listen Up! to what people have to say around homelessness and give them a platform to be heard – which is exactly what the project does:
Prince William reflects: “These stories are so powerful, so inspirational, we should be hearing more of them, we should be seeing more of them, we should be encouraged that there are wonderful people out there and organisations like Groundswell, doing incredible work to help and elevate and put people back on the path that they need. Because many of the people can help themselves like you [Miles and Nawshin] said, but they just need a couple of pointers…just to help them on their way.”
During the episode, Miles, Nawshin and Prince William reflect on how the pandemic proved homelessness could be ended due to people rallying together. Prince William highlights collaboration as a foundation for ending this tragic, preventable issue, explaining “what I’m trying to work towards is that homelessness is rare, its brief and it’s non recurrent.”
Nawshin agrees and emphasises that people with experience of homelessness have to be part of this collaboration:
“It should be about having better conversations and relationships with social workers, with the people who have the power or the resources; we need to create better harmony between them.”
This is exactly what Listen Up! is about, elevating voices to kickstart major change for people affected by homelessness.
A theme throughout the discussion is humanity; Miles and Nawshin have unique experiences that meant they were faced with homelessness, but connection with people and personal resilience was part of their recovery, Miles says:
“There’s so much intelligence, there’s so much creativity, resilience, in people who are facing real testing life things and they have the solutions, if you just ask them, they know what needs changing.”
The podcast ends positively, with the three of them uniting around the goal to end homelessness, with storytelling central to the solution to tackle the stigma. Prince William says:
“If we’ve done anything with this conversation today, we’ve shined a spotlight on homelessness and how important it is to tackle.”
Acknowledgments:
Thank you to Comic Relief and the BBC for their assistance in making this podcast. It was produced by Chris Walter from On Our Radar, and Leo Schick from Feast Collective.
About Groundswell
Groundswell works with people with experience of homelessness, offering opportunities to contribute to society and create solutions to homelessness. Participation is at our core because the experience of homelessness is crucial in making decisions that affect lives and ultimately help people to move out of homelessness.
Comic Relief fund Listen Up! a Groundswell project that gives people experiencing homelessness a platform to hold decision makers to account and contribute to change in policy, systems, and commissioning to tackle inequality. They do this through written reports, podcasts and film.
We gather peoples experience of homelessness and bring this to key decision makers, so they collaborate in creating change leading to equal access to healthcare and the opportunity to move out of homelessness for good.
On Our Radar
Our official partner on the Listen Up! project is On Our Radar, a digital storytelling organisation who surface powerful stories and crucial insight from marginalised communities worldwide. They provide the technology for our reporters to share their stories, as well as crucial training in areas such as storytelling, podcast and film making.