At age 32, Shakira has nine Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards, and has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide—but the singing sensation’s real passion is providing early childhood education in her home country of Colombia. In 1995 (when she was only 18) Shakira launched the Pies Descalzos Foundation (
Barefoot Foundation) to help provide education to children stricken by poverty. This past February, she used $4 million of her own money raised from her 2006 tour (along with $2 million donated by Howard Buffett) to open a school in her hometown of Barranquilla, her sixth in the regions of Altos de Cazucá and Quibdó. Nearly 1,800 children attend the 140,000-sq.-foot school, and its opening was attended by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who hailed Shakira as “a great leader in the world of philanthropy." Shakira hopes her efforts will “break the myth that quality education is the privilege of the few.” Previously, Colombia’s schools were so overcrowded they could only hold 16 percent of the neighborhood children, and while visiting one of her other schools located in a remote area of the Colombian jungle, Shakira
said all of the children now getting an education were previously displaced or had fled their hometowns.
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