Fear of poverty motivated Shakira to taste success

LONDON - Popular singer Shakira claims her drive for success comes from seeing poverty during her childhood.

“My dad went bankrupt when I was eight-years-old. I remember the day I realised that pretty much all of the comfort of our lives had gone. We had had very decent lives — two cars, my dad had a successful business, and then from one day to the next we lost everything,” contactmusic.com quoted her as saying.

“He took me to the park to show me a reality much worse than ours. There were all these barefoot orphaned kids who were sniffing glue. I guess the image stuck in my head. I promised myself, ‘One day I’m going to succeed because there’s no way I’m not having a car again’.”

“And I thought, ‘If I ever do it, I’m going to do something about these kids’.”

The “She Wolf” hit maker kept to her promise and set up a charity when she had her first taste of fame at 18.

“When I had my first big success with ‘Pies Descalzos’, the album that made it big in Latin America when I was 18, I decided to establish my first foundation in Columbia.

“Ever since, I’ve been investing all my efforts in education, which have achieved amazing results for kids who live in poverty and conflict or kids who might have been recruited by the guerrillas or drugs cartels.”