Shakira | Education Changes Lives | Davos 2017

Lesson 1Why every child deserves a chance

No, of course it's a very prestigious award, but I think that it's mostly a reflection, I hope that it's a reflection on the global understanding of the importance of investing in early childhood development. I hope that it means that the issues become on top of mind for everyone. Yeah, I'm definitely on top of every detail on how the schools work, the progress that we're making in our schools. I decided to create my own foundation when I was only 18 and since then we've been working on education, trying to provide high-quality education. So it is a challenge and it comes with many obstacles that we had to overcome and we have to still overcome on a daily basis. We work in very remote areas where literally there's nothing. Sometimes we encounter tremendous lack of infrastructure, no potable water, in many cases no electricity. No paved roads. So it definitely means that we have to work twice as hard in order to offer a quality education. But not only that, also the kids that we attend to, most of them belong to families that have been directly affected by violence, that have lost even family members. So you can imagine the challenges that we encounter when we try to provide that education. So I have to be constantly understanding, learning about their needs. I dedicate a huge portion of my time to advocating for education for all. But also to improving what we offer in our schools, in Colombia and other places in the world.

Lesson 2Schools built with communities

Yeah, from the beginning I didn't just want to build schools, I wanted to build state-of-the-art schools. But what does that mean? It means that they had to be comprehensive, integral. They had to encompass not only four walls and learning materials, they had to encompass programs to engage the entire community, to maintain the schools. The school feeding program is the cornerstone upon which our programs are built. It's definitely the center and the core of our work. Offering food in our schools is such a key, vital element in order to keep the kids in school. So little by little we were introducing other elements that were improving what we were offering, the kind of education that we were offering. You know, involving the parents, training teachers and also even making available sports facilities to the rest of the community.

Lesson 3Every penny invested is worth it

But I'm telling you, it's so worth it. Every penny that we've invested in schools and in education have been so worth our while. I don't feel that I have wasted any money or effort or energy when it comes to investing in education, especially on ECD.