Sophie, Countess of Wessex, 54, is a full-time working royal, meaning she spends much of her time attending royal engagements for a large number of charities and organisations, and working in support of Queen Elizabeth II. This week, Sophie is in India, on a five-day tour. The visit came due to her role as Vice Patron of the Queen Eizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust. However, it will be the final time that the Countess travels overseas for a tour in this role, due to the Trust’s planned closure in January 2020.
The Trust is a time-limited charitable foundation, established in 2012, in order to mark and celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s 60-year contribution to the Commonwealth at the time of her Diamond Jubilee.
However, it will close as planned, on January 31 next year.
During this week’s trip, the Countess will see the work that the charitable foundation has supported, in order to tackle avoidable blindness in babies born prematurely.
She will also hear about the impact of programmes successfully launched by Queen’s Young Leaders – which was launched by the Trust in 2014.
Today, she arrived in Hyderabad and visited a number of hospitals in the area to learn about the hard work which the Trust is supporting.
During her visit, she met with prematurely-born babies and their mothers.
Sophie’s own daughter, Lady Louise Windsor, now 15, was a premature baby.
The Countess will also visit Mumbai and New Delhi.
During her time in Mumbai, she will pay a visit to a school, meeting Queen’s Young Leader Deane de Menezes, whose project Red is the new Green.
The campaign aims to destigmatise menstruation, improve access to menstrual hygiene, and aims to put a stop to female absenteeism in schools due to this issue.
Sophie will also join the British High Commissioner in hosting a reception to celebrate the collaborative efforts to advance eye health in India, while in New Delhi.
While in the capital, Sophie will also undertake engagements in support of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS), championing the empowerment of women.
In an unearthed interview from 2016, Sophie spoke about life in the Royal Family.
And, during the chat with Sky News, the Countess revealed that Lady Louise had struggled to put two and two together when it came to her grandmother’s royal role.
Explaining the youngster hadn’t realised her grandmother was the Queen, Sophie said: “I mean Louise had no concept really that the Queen and her grandmother were one and the same person.
“So it wasn’t until she was at school when other children were mentioning and saying, ‘Your grandmother is the Queen’.
“And she’d come home and say, ‘Mummy they say that Grandmama is the Queen.’ And I said, ‘Yes,” and she said, ‘I don’t understand what they mean.’”