Shakira loosens her purse strings

The singer is donating $ 40 million to help rebuild places in Peru and Nicaragua hit by natural disasters

Kind-hearted pop star Shakira is donating $40 million (Rs 159.1 crore ) to help repair damage caused by an earthquake in Peru and a hurricane in Nicaragua.

The Hips Don’t Lie singer will donate the money from a foundation she co-founded during a summit on global climate change and development organised by former US president Bill Clinton in New York.

Shakira had, along with Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, co-founded the Latin America for Solidarity Foundation, ALAS, which means wings in Spanish.
“I’ve seen first-hand many of the challenges facing Latin America,” she said in a statement.

The two-time Grammy Award winner, who started another foundation to help poor children in Colombia when she was only 18, said 40 million infants do not go to school and 51 million people don’t have access to clean water in Latin America.

“These are challenging problems that no one person can address, but working together everyone can help make a difference,” she added.

The ALAS effort for Peru and Nicaragua includes partners like the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation, Telefonica, America Movil and the Red Cross. It aims to guarantee investments for rebuilding education, sanitation and water systems in both countries. Shakira also announced a three-year, $5 million (Rs 19.8 crore) commitment for projects for children in the region, where about 40 per cent of the population lives in poverty.

Shakira Tickets

Though she had dreams of becoming a model, Shakira is more than a pretty face. This multi-talented Colombian has been writing songs since she was only eight years old and in 2001, she became one of the few Latin singers to successfully crossover when her song "Whenever, Wherever" became an American chart-topper. She released her two-volume album Oral Fixation, which contains the mega-hit "La Tortura," a duet with Alejandro Sanz, as well as "Don't Bother" and "Hips Don't Lie."

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For more than ten years, one artist more than others has incorporated her local culture into the world of pop - Shakira. Concert tickets to her shows are a chance to hear a truly unique blend of pop and Latin musical influences of several types. Her fans will tell you that her performances feature not only great music, but lively dance numbers and intimate interaction with the audience, no matter how large or small.

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Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1977. She has a varied background, as her mother is of Catalán and Italian descent and her father is American-born with a Lebanese background. Shakira met struggle with her first forays into music, as her school choir rejected her. Her persistence paid off, though, as she has released 13 albums. Her first commercial success came in 1995 with the release of Pies Descalzos , which sold over 5 million copies. In 2001, Shakira "crossed over" into the English language market with Laundry Service, which sold over 13 million copies. Shakira tickets allow her fans to see a world of music mixed with multi-culturalism, and her performances are memorable in many ways.