One week out from the earthquake that shook Colombia to its core, Shakira is returning home. On Monday, the singer travels to Chocó, the area that bore the brunt of the magnitude-7.4 quake that struck on August 10 with an epicenter in San José del Palmar. It's a trip she's making not as a performer, but as a Colombian.
Shakira is on her way to Colombia to visit her country as it heals from the impact of the earthquake (@ Matthias Hangst)
According to Vanitatis, Shakira is expected to land around 2:30 p.m. local time and head to a local school, accompanied by the mayor and the governor of the region. Her arrival is scheduled for roughly 3:15 p.m., when she'll spend the day with students, families, and teachers still reeling from the disaster.
The stop is no coincidence: the school sits at the intersection of Shakira's music career and her philanthropic one. It's tied to her Barefoot Foundation, which opened its first school in Quibdó, Chocó's capital, back in 2005. In the two decades since, the foundation has built out a network of programs aimed at improving educational access for children and expanding opportunities for teenagers and young adults across Colombia, with education as the throughline of everything it does.
Few artists carry the weight that Shakira does in Colombia, and her presence in Chocó this week is being read as a gesture of solidarity from one of the country's own, delivered in person rather than from a stage or a screen.
#earthquake
Shakira is on her way to Colombia to visit her country as it heals from the impact of the earthquake (@ Matthias Hangst)
According to Vanitatis, Shakira is expected to land around 2:30 p.m. local time and head to a local school, accompanied by the mayor and the governor of the region. Her arrival is scheduled for roughly 3:15 p.m., when she'll spend the day with students, families, and teachers still reeling from the disaster.
The stop is no coincidence: the school sits at the intersection of Shakira's music career and her philanthropic one. It's tied to her Barefoot Foundation, which opened its first school in Quibdó, Chocó's capital, back in 2005. In the two decades since, the foundation has built out a network of programs aimed at improving educational access for children and expanding opportunities for teenagers and young adults across Colombia, with education as the throughline of everything it does.
Few artists carry the weight that Shakira does in Colombia, and her presence in Chocó this week is being read as a gesture of solidarity from one of the country's own, delivered in person rather than from a stage or a screen.
#earthquake
2 months ago
