We devote a lot of space to celebrity do-gooders in this blog category. However, looking back at previous blogs I have noticed the majority of them focus on the charitable works of Americans. Well, here’s a blog and about a non-American celebrity who is reaching out to children from her home country. Five time Latin Grammy nominee Shakira just announced she will donate the proceeds from a concert in her hometown to build an arts school for 1,800 children forced to flee their homes by Colombia’s civil war.
According to press reports, the concert will take place November 15th in the Caribbean port city of Barranquilla. While it will be part of the pop diva’s worldwide Oral Fixation tour, it is also being billed as a homecoming for the hip-shaking international superstar. As I mentioned earlier, all proceeds from the concert will go to fund an English and Spanish bilingual school to be built in La Playa, a poor suburb of Barranquilla where 45 percent of the residents are minors, only about half of whom attend school. When it is complete, the school will bear the name of Shakira’s Pies Descalzos (Spanish for Bare Feet) foundation and have an emphasis on arts education.
According to her publicist, Shakira chose La Playa’s because some 22,000 residents there are among the estimated “three million people internally displaced by a half-century of armed conflict between leftist rebels, far-right paramilitary groups and army troops.” And while Shakira’s foundation already helps more than 3,00 children living in three other communities of internally displaced persons, the pop star says the proposed school holds a special place in her heart because it will give children “the opportunity to free themselves of the terrible situation they find themselves in.”
The school, which is set to open in 2008, has received the backing of education authorities. Another interesting note about the school: it is being designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Vinoly, who’s credited with having designed New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center complex.
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