“It’s already having an enormous social impact on this area. And it’s already showing the kind of transformational power that education has,” she says with evident pride in her fluid English. So we just inaugurated this school for 1,700 students. It’s a very impoverished area, where kids have no access to a high-quality education programme. “It’s in an area where there’s a huge population of displaced people – refugees in their own country. Her educational foundation, Pias Descalzos (Barefoot), which was named after her third album, has just opened its sixth school in Colombia, in Cartagena. She might be famed for her four-way hips – as hymned in 2006’s global smash “Hips Don’t Lie” – but she’s no mere show-pony. Her hair is elaborately braided and swishy, her white blouse quietly luxurious. Shakira is sat, business-like at desk in a hotel suite. “So,” the continues, “people who want to try – yeah, I do feel in a way like an ambassador, for all of those.” By the time she was 20 she and her parents had relocated to Miami in pursuit of pop success in the English-speaking world. She signed her first record deal aged 13, then moved to the capital Bogota and became a soap actress at 15. When she was nine and living in the coastal town of Baranquilla, her father’s jewellery business collapsed, plunging their middle-class life into ruin. People who struggle, people who want to succeed with drive and ambition.” I feel like there is a part of me that represents a minority in the US, a minority around the world. I have to do the best I can in my own work to represent my culture, represent the women of my country, of Latin America. “I do feel that I have to use my voice for those that don’t have one. Does she, then, feel some responsibility to speak for her culture and where she comes from? “I do,” comes the instant, firm reply.
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