The Duchess of Cambridge has delivered her first public address, giving a brief though confident speech at the opening of a children's hospice in eastern England.
The former Kate Middleton spoke slowly but clearly as she addressed staff and volunteers of East Anglia's Children's Hospice, in the port town of Ipswich.
The 30-year-old duchess is a royal patron of the charity and was there to launch the charity's latest facility, the Treehouse. The hospice offers care to children with serious, life-threatening conditions.
"What you do is inspirational," she told the staff and volunteers. "It is a shining example of the support and the care that is delivered, not just here, but in the children's hospice movement at large, up and down the country.
"The feelings you inspire – feelings of love and of hope – offer a chance to families to live a life they never thought could be possible."
She also referred to the extraordinary fundraising effort that made the opening of Treehouse possible. Over 3 million British pounds were raised to build the facility in less than 12 months.
"What you have all achieved here is extraordinary," she said. "You, as a community, have built the Treehouse, a group of people who have made every effort to support and help each other."
She added that she was just sorry that her husband, Prince William, could not join her to visit the hospice. He is on military assignment in the Falkland Islands.
Though Kate's speech ran only three minutes and she needed to look down at her notes frequently throughout its delivery, the duchess had written the speech herself and delivered it faultlessly.
She received a resounding round of applause at the end of her address and smiled broadly at her audience.
Kate chose to wear a blue dress from Reiss that her mother, Carole Middleton, had borrowed from her to wear to Ascot in 2010, instead of buying a new outfit. Royal watcher Richard Berthelsen says that wardrobe choice was likely quite deliberate.
"She wants to cut a tone of being very thrifty, very careful, not too flashy," Berthelsen told CTV News Channel.
"Some people have said, ‘Maybe she shouldn't buy off the rack; she is after all a future princess.' But she's taking a different tone. It's very much in keeping with the kind of austerity era we're living in, in particular in the United Kingdom."
Ahead of her speech, the duchess toured the hospice's facilities and met the children with life-threatening illnesses who live there.
She was presented with a posie by six-year-old Tilly, who was diagnosed with a heart condition as a baby and who has been cared for at the hospice.
She also toured the hospice's music therapy room where she listened to 10-year-old Bethany Woods sing a rendition of "Rainbow Connection" from "The Muppet Movie." Woods has a condition called merosin-negative congenital muscular dystrophy, which causes poor muscle tone, tightness in the joints and respiratory problems.
The Duchess chose to become a patron of the Treehouse in January, after personally researching a number of charity options. She is now president of four charities, including the Treehouse hospice.
Public engagements such as Monday's are expected to be a huge part of royal life.
With a report from the Associated Press
