India Hicks

It's been a year in the making, so I'm sitting here slightly nervous, wondering, because obviously the goal is to really break all records with fundraising because we've got a lot of work to do.

I think I'm repaying in many ways the life that I was born into.

I also work a lot for a disaster relief agency called Global Empowerment Mission.

And I go to Ukraine every at least two or three times a year with them.

We go right out to the front lines.

There are missiles going off and bombs going and you feel it underneath and, you know, we worry for our lives.

But it is a great privilege that I get to go and that I work for this agency.

I think, you know, one doesn't want to sit here and feel all boring and pious and, you know, I'm so good.

I'm not.

I'm not.

But I enjoy adventure.

And I have found that there is a skill set I have, which is asking people for money.

And it's much easier.

when I can show them where their money is going.

So if I find a big American donor and I say, we can rebuild a building in Ukraine, I can be on the ground in Ukraine and show them, this is the building, these are the people whose lives we're going to be transforming.

It's much more powerful than sitting at my desk at home.

Every year, a cardboard box would arrive from the Royal, the Maker Good, wasn't it?

G-O-O-D-E.

And in it would be a saucer or a gravy dish or a cup.

And as a seven-year-old, and again, talking about press, taking things out of context, I once told this story saying, as a seven-year-old, it was very confusing to have a gravy dish for Christmas.