In private or public, Shakira often uses the sound bites of the expert social entrepreneur. “I grew up in the developing world, I grew up seeing injustice,” she told me. “I grew up in the middle of a severe social crisis, left and right wings fighting with each other, people in the middle caught in the crossfire. I've seen millions of people displaced in Colombia. But I've also seen that, in countries like mine, when a child is born poor, he will die poor, unless he receives an opportunity. That opportunity is education. It's that helping hand that they're looking for. Latin America is a young continent, it's malleable, it's flexible. We still can change.”
"We are here to initiate the creation of a grand alliance, between the public sector and civil society, to protect the most fragile people in our population, the children."
She said that Latin presidents “want to be on the same ship as, you know, Obama and some of the other presidents. They're noting that this is becoming a priority for so many other governments in the first world, and that the underdeveloped countries should not stay behind.”