Harry and Meghan to make first official joint engagement in Nottingham
The Prince is said to be "looking forward" to introducing his fiancee to "a community that has become very special to him".
Friday 1 December 2017 08:01, UK
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will visit Nottingham later for their first official engagement together.
Harry has become a regular visitor to the city over the last four years, meeting up with youth workers and young people helped by the Full Effect project.
The community group, which is backed by Prince Harry's Royal Foundation, works in the St Ann's area of the city to stop youth violence and crime through a variety of projects from rapping workshops, film production and sports programmes.
Harry and Meghan will go to Nottingham Academy where they will meet teachers from the academy and other primary schools, as well Full Effect staff and mentors, to hear about the impact the project is having on local children.
In a statement Kensington Palace said: "Prince Harry has spent a significant amount of private and public time in the city and His Royal Highness is looking forward to introducing Ms Markle to a community that has become very special to him."
Trevor Rose from the Full Effect Project knew that the Prince was going to be visiting this week but only found out on Tuesday that Meghan would also be visiting when it was announced to the media.
He told Sky News: "Honestly, it's like a moment in time that I'm never going to forget.
"It's beyond anything I could have imagined. I'm still trying to tell myself it's happening."
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Harry and Meghan will also mark World Aids Day with a visit to an event hosted by the Terrence Higgins Trust at Nottingham Contemporary.
Combating the stigma that still surrounds HIV and Aids has become a key part of Harry's charitable work, following on from the work of his late mother Princess Diana.
Before going into the event at Nottingham Contemporary, Meghan will take part in her first ever royal walkabout, joining her future husband to meet the crowds.
The fifth in line to the throne and the American actress announced their engagement on Monday.
A day later Kensington Palace confirmed that Ms Markle would be applying to become a British citizen and was keen to get out and visit parts of the country that she will now call home.
Dr Karen Salt, co-director of the Centre for Research in Race and Rights (C3R) at the University of Nottingham, said: "She's coming into a space that has had a long and vital history, as well as a place that is trying to reckon with its past legacies of not quite nice treatments of different types of people, also one where people are sitting down and working together and forming anti-racist coalitions."
Prince Harry and Ms Markle are now living at Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace as they prepare for their wedding at St George's Chapel, Windsor, in May.