Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, who performs pseudonymously and irresponsibly as "Shakira", gets a nice write-up in the New York Times about her charitable work. The obligatory video is below, but you have to read the whole article before you can watch the video. All 5 pages.

No cheating because Shakira’s ass would know.

Excerpt:

Speeding along in the S.U.V. past the rickety roadside stalls of San Salvador, Shakira kept her focus on practical policy: “It has been scientifically proven,” Shakira said — as Bono told me in an e-mail message, “When she gets going on the subject of child poverty she can be pretty scary” — “that a kid that receives proper stimulation and nutrition during these early years will develop all their potential in life: intellectual skills, learning abilities, social and emotional abilities. . . . So many other countries in Asia or in Europe are already putting early-childhood development at the top of their agendas, and we want our heads of state to do the same.” To that end, she told me she would insist on obtaining promises of action and the establishment of an early-childhood working group at this year’s Ibero-American Summit. “We want that every president walks out with a firm commitment. We want to make sure that they will go back to their countries with those children between zero and 6 years old in their minds, and understanding very well what early-childhood development initiatives mean.”

The meeting’s working committee would, helped by ALAS’s research wing in New York and a more political headquarters in Bogotá, establish and define best practices and help states develop pilot projects in at least five countries. Shakira explained that “the idea is that this committee could report back during the next summit in Portugal in 2009,” looking back on what was accomplished or at least presenting “a very concrete plan” for future accomplishments, to be agreed and acted on before the 2010 meeting. Of course, even the most concrete plans can vanish into a bureaucratic void. Much depended on how strong the committee’s pulse would be, under the leadership of Enrique V. Iglesias, a former head of the Inter-American Development Bank (for more than 17 years) and once Uruguay’s foreign minister. A great deal also depended on how well ALAS’s Bogotá office was able to bird-dog projects and generally keep momentum up when there were no pop stars around.

[...]

ALAS may seek to change Latin America, but it also represents something very traditional — the power of concentrated wealth. Its president, Alejandro Santo Domingo, is the 32-year-old scion of Colombia’s formidable Santo Domingo family. The vice presidents are Shakira’s boyfriend, de la Rua, who is a son of a former president of Argentina, and Alejandro Soberón, a very successful Mexican entertainment promoter and developer. He is a business associate of Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest men (and a prominent stakeholder in The New York Times). Slim is on ALAS’s board, as are Joseph Safra (Brazilian banker and investor), Alejandro Bulgheroni (Argentina; oil and gas), Emilio Azcárraga (Mexico; broadcasting) and Stanley Motta (Panama; airlines). Latin America is run by families, and together the ALAS board accounts for a significant portion of the region’s economy. Could Latin America’s richest philanthropists succeed in reducing its crushing levels of inequality when generations of strongmen, technocrats, guerrillas and reformers have failed?

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