A good thing by a rock star; go figure

Scott Malcomson has an article about an unlikely do-gooder in The New York Times:

Last October, on the plane from Miami to San Salvador, Shakira stared into her MacBook, pondering. The next morning, she was to give a speech on the importance of early-childhood development to an Ibero-American summit meeting that would gather most of the heads of state of Latin America as well as the prime minister and king of Spain, the prime minister of Portugal and a select group of somewhat lesser dignitaries. This was not the usual venue for Shakira Mebarak Ripoll of Barranquilla, Colombia. That would be stadium-size, and could be anywhere in the world, filled with thousands and thousands of fans, the people who have made her among the biggest-selling female vocalists on the planet. But Shakira has this other side — she began charitable work right after she had her first big hit, at eighteen— and, two years ago, she, her longtime boyfriend, Antonio de la Rua, and some of their friends conceived the idea of a loose union of Ibero-American singers, called ALAS ('wings', in Spanish), which would use the power of their fame to mobilize fans, and the politicians fans vote for, to advance the cause of early-childhood development. Since then they had rallied most of the biggest pop stars in the Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking worlds; held enormous concerts in Mexico and Argentina; gained the philanthropic support of some of Latin America’s richest families (as well as Warren Buffett’s son Howard); and captured the attention of a good number of heads of state. Now, flying down to El Salvador, staring at her Mac, she was, perhaps, approaching her moment of political breakthrough.
“It’s already too long!” she said, smiling resignedly as she typed out her speech. “And I still have more I want to say.” Tap tap tap. At the back of the eight-seater plane was the Spanish megastar Alejandro Sanz, scratching out his own speech, his girlfriend next to him, in a leggy bundle, nursing a bad cold. His relaxed focus contrasted with Shakira’s nervousness, and periodically Shakira ribbed him about it, which made him grin. Tap tap tap.
She turned back to look at him. “I’m afraid,” she said in Spanish, her face momentarily still. “Y por qué?” Sanz asked. “Because it’s so important.” The little group— a publicist, a manager, an aide, the already mute girlfriend— went silent. Then Shakira returned to her speechwriting as we passed above Cuba.
Celebrity philanthropy, rock ’n’ roll philanthropy, is no longer a novelty, but what Shakira and ALAS were trying was indeed new. They were looking to use the power of pop to help the populations not of distant impoverished lands but of the Ibero-American world from which they come. They have a policy focus— early-childhood nutrition, education and medical care— that is on a scale beyond the reach of private charity. It requires the steady effort of the state. It cannot be addressed by rich countries’ check-writing. So the trick is to take pop celebrity, marry it to big business, and permanently alter the way Latin American governments help care for the young and the poor. What the golden-haired young woman staring at her laptop was trying to do was a tall order, given the fragility of celebrity influence, the dubious track record of Latin American governments in providing social services, and the lengthening shadow of a global recession that was straitening everyone’s budget. But she is not someone whom it would be reasonable to underestimate.
Shakira’s normal manner is intense and preoccupied, with interruptions of bright enthusiasm; but with fans she is all attentive patience. As she prepared to exit the plane in San Salvador, she kept her back to the small crowd of airport employees, adjusted her hair and composed her features. Then she flipped the charisma switch, turned, released the full wattage of her brilliant smile, and descended the stairs.
Once we were in the SUVs, the pace quickened. We had an armed escort, sirens blared, and we moved very fast along a narrow road past brightly colored hammocks strung up inside fruit and vegetable stands made of boards and rusting tin. She told me in English that she had been here before, “many times”. She said that with her first and second albums— actually her third and fourth, but she doesn’t like to speak of the first two— she toured constantly through Latin America, “to every radio station, even the smallest,” slowly building an audience. Her theory, which would have meshed well with her somewhat extreme work ethic, was that the hard effort would pay off in loyalty. “All an artist needs,” she added, by way of explanation, “is her fans.” The odd thing was that she looked so sad when she said it.
That third album, Pies Descalzos (Barefoot), came out when Shakira was eighteen. It was a huge hit, and she quickly took some of the profits and put them into projects for feeding and educating children in Colombia. The chorus of the title track begins: You are part of an ancient race/With bare feet and blank dreams/You were dust, you will be dust. Not all her songs have this kind of melancholy, but a lot of them do. While her high-energy, hip-slinging persona has taken her fame to the heights, it is this very intimate, often suffering, sometimes insecure and wised-up voice that won her fans as she trooped along the byways of Central and South America, one radio station at a time.
Speeding along in the SUV 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.”

Rico says there's a ton more; click the post title to read it.