Princess Diana In A Changing World example essay topic

One year ago, the death of a princess brought an entire world to tears. The wounds are slowly healing and the grief is less painful. What remains are the lessons that can be learned from a phenomenon that few can entirely forget. At the time it was a mystery. A divorced member of the royal family of a medium-sized European nation dies in a banal car accident in Paris, and for a week the sun, moon and stars are knocked off their appointed tracks. Within days, Europe suffers a shortage of cut flowers as tens of thousands of bouquets are laid before the house of the victim.

Demand for newsprint soars; the funeral, watched live on television throughout the world, attracts an audience of 1 billion. A few years later, the mystery remains. What was the Diana phenomenon all about? Diana's former husband, Prince Charles, is more popular than he has been for years. The French authorities are still looking for the white Fiat Uno. Real news - terrorism, Russia, Bill Clinton's sex life, two pregnant Spice Girls, all this knocks the event from the front pages.

And we wonder: those flowers, that grief, 'The People's Princess. ' Why did Diana move us so? "I think the biggest disease this world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved, and I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give. I'm very happy to do that and I want to do that", says Diana (2, page 96).

Princess Diana in a changing world like ours today there is many uncertainties. There is one thing we are sure about, that's our own pass. When you look back at your life are you going to see yourself as a leader or a follower? There is one woman from the last century, one that sticks out, to have been a leader for us. We need more women like Princess Diana to step up and become leaders in this changing world. Diana was associated with over 150 charities, and was president or patron of more than 90.

Hospital patients sometimes awoke in the small hours to find the 'Queen of Hearts,' in jeans and baseball cap, at their bedside to comfort the sick and the dying. Some of Diana's charities included the Leprosy Mission, she made substantial personal donations as wells as raising its profile. "A fund-raising meal at Kensington Palace brought in lb 100,000. There was her beloved English National Ballet, for when a Diana even could raise lb 50,000 to lb 80,000 a time, and the Centrepoint charity for the homeless, to whom her patronage brought unquantifiable funds and attention" (says Peter Donnelly pg. 96). Now the charities with which she was still associated - Centrepoint, The English National Ballet, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, The Leprosy Mission, The National Aids Trust and The Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Trust, are facing up to a future without a patron whose backing was impossible to evaluate. A spokeswoman for Great Ormond Street Hospital, with which the princess had been involved since 1987, said: 'Her support was invaluable and incalculable.

' 'I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts". Princess Diana (BBC TV interview). Diana was patron of the National AIDS Trust and helped put their work in front of the public, as well as raising many thousands of pounds to help them do it. She was president of the Royal Marsden NHS Trust at the London cancer hospital; she had an interest in patients and research. On one of her trips to Chicago raised $800,000 for the hospital, and the auction of her clothes in New York brought in another lb 1 million.

Diana was Fund President of London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. "On many official or private visits to wards, she sought out the shyest child for her special attention" (2, pg. 97) Children were Diana's delight, she always wanted a little girl. When one little eight-year-old girl Danielle first met the princess, she had no idea of the identity of the special person who was to visit the Rose Ward of London's Royal Brampton Hospital, where she was lying ill with an irregular heartbeat. Danielle thought it was going to be Alan Shearer. It was, in fact, Diana, paying a private visit to the hospital to see a patient. Diana visited Nepal to see for herself the type of fieldwork in which the Red Cross was involved.

As well as her often-unnoticed help at British hospitals, Diana also famously helped the work of Mother Theresa of Calcutta and Imran Khan, the former Pakistani cricket hero, with his charity cancer hospital. 'This world has few people like Diana,' Imran Khan said, 'who work so devotedly for the well-being of the poor, deprived and down-trodden. ' (2, page 103) Diana's most recent campaign was against landmines, which really engaged her passion. How, she was asked, had she got involved in the first place?

'A lot of information started landing on my desk about landmines, and I suppose the pictures were so horrific... that I felt perhaps if I could be part of a team to raise the profile around the world, it would help'. Film director Lord Attenborough was a vital link, too: 'He invited me to the film premiere of In Love and War, which is raising money for the British Red Cross landmines appeal. So it seemed sensible to come out here to take some pictures to make the people sitting in their comfortable seats in Leicester Square understand where their money is going... ' 'What's to discuss', she demanded, 'when people are being blown up?' (2, pg. 104). She added: 'I didn't have any set agenda. I didn't know what to expect.

I was open-minded about it, but I'm surprised at the level of injuries. The number of amputees is quite shocking. You read the statistics, but actually going into the centers and seeing them struggling to gain a life again after they have had something ripped off, that is shocking. ' Sometimes, Diana admitted, the scenes she saw were horrifying. 'But over the years I've learned to cope with it, because each person is an individual. Each person needs a bit of love.

You don't think about yourself. You always take it home with you. I have lasting impressions of people struggling and they are very touching. ' Especially she remembered a little girl she had met in hospital: 'She had her intestines blown out. She's very, very, poorly, and I think just looking at her and thinking what was going on inside her head and heart was very disturbing. ' But she's just one statistic, and there are millions of landmines lying around.

Someone has got to do something. ' That someone, she had decided, was herself and, once she had committed herself to the cause, The Queen of Hearts was a very determined lady. Diana, the Princess of Wales will always be cherished for her love that she tried to shower on the needy and less fortunate people around the world. Her beliefs and causes should not be forgotten just because she is no longer with us. Instead, they should serve to remind us what caring really means, not merely spoken words but rather, actions that are felt.