Colombian superstar Shakira traveled to one of her country's poorest and hardest-hit provinces after a deadly 7.4 magnitude earthquake and committed to building at least ten new schools, backing the pledge with more than a million dollars in secured funding.
The 49-year-old Grammy winner arrived unannounced Monday in Quibdó, the capital of Chocó province in western Colombia, where she toured damaged school buildings, embraced students, and announced a concrete reconstruction plan backed by her own Fundación Pies Descalzos and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. The August 10 earthquake killed at least 287 people, destroyed more than 26,000 dwellings, and left a region already defined by deep poverty struggling to account for its missing.
Chocó, a jungle-covered province roughly the size of Switzerland, connected mostly by rivers and unpaved roads, lost at least 3,100 homes and saw more than 265 educational sites damaged, the Associated Press reported. The regional government released those figures the same day Shakira arrived. Roughly 40 schools collapsed entirely in the province, with hundreds more sustaining serious damage, according to AP News.
Shakira did not come with vague promises. She announced $500,000 pledges from both the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund and Live Nation, plus an additional $250,000 from the CAF Development Bank, totaling $1.25 million in committed outside funding for school reconstruction, Breitbart reported. She also pledged her personal efforts toward rebuilding a local technological university in Chocó.
The singer's Fundación Pies Descalzos, the Barefoot Foundation, has run two schools in Chocó for more than two decades. Hundreds of students have graduated from those programs. That long track record separates Shakira's commitment from the kind of celebrity fly-in that generates a photo opportunity and little else.
Howard Buffett, the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett and a longtime donor to Colombian education projects, accompanied Shakira on the visit. His foundation has helped her set up schools in the region before. Asked about his presence, Buffett kept it simple.
"When she calls, I come."
The collaboration between the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and Fundación Pies Descalzos will drive the ten-school construction effort, though the specific funding split and governance structure have not been disclosed.
Shakira told reporters during her visit that her greatest fear was not the immediate destruction but the long-term neglect that typically follows a disaster in a place like Chocó.
"What worries me the most is that schools are not rebuilt once this emergency is over."
That concern carries weight in a province where Colombia's own national government acknowledged last year that most of Chocó's roughly 600,000 inhabitants live in poverty. The region is home largely to Indigenous tribes and Afro-Colombian communities, populations that have historically received less government investment and slower disaster recovery.
Colombian authorities put the official death toll at 287 and reported 194 people still missing. But civilian-run databases tracking the unaccounted put the missing-persons figure above 4,100, a gap of more than twenty-fold that neither the government nor independent observers have publicly explained. Total damages from the quake have been estimated at roughly $9.6 billion.
That discrepancy matters. In a province with few roads, limited infrastructure, and communities scattered along river systems, the real scope of loss may not be known for weeks or months. And the people left waiting for answers are not elites in Bogotá. They are subsistence families in one of the most isolated corners of South America.
At a large high school in Quibdó, Shakira addressed students and families directly.
"There is not a way to alleviate the pain of so many, there are no magic solutions. But what there is, is commitment to be here alongside those from Chocó, to not abandon El Chocó like it historically has been abandoned, until every Colombian and every person from Chocó can return to their normal lives like they deserve and all the children can return to their schools and dream of the futures they deserve."
In a video posted on X by the Colombian news outlet La FM, Shakira described Chocó in personal terms.
"It's a place I love, a place where I've seen our students grow in our classrooms. I really want to see it rebuild again."
Shakira's trip to Chocó was part of a broader wave of celebrity-driven fundraising for Colombia's earthquake recovery. On Sunday, Marc Anthony, Chayanne, and dozens of other artists held a benefit concert and live fundraiser in Miami for Colombia and Venezuela earthquake relief. Venezuela suffered twin earthquakes in June, and the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund had previously committed $500,000 to education recovery there.
Colombian singer Karol G pledged to match fan donations to her Con Cora Foundation during a three-night run at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles last weekend. She is set to join Maluma, Sebastián Yatra, and others at a benefit concert in Bogotá this coming Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Colombian Football Federation and the South American Football Confederation jointly committed $1 million last week to Colombian First Lady Ana Lucía Pineda's "Colombia, one heart" recovery fund.
Shakira herself headlined the halftime show of the 2026 FIFA World Cup final match in July and performed to a crowd of 2 million on Brazil's Copacabana Beach in May. She is one of the most visible entertainers on the planet, and she chose to spend her Monday walking through rubble in a province most of the world has never heard of.
Shakira framed the stakes in terms any parent would understand.
"Every day that children don't go to school is a day they miss out on their future."
With more than 265 educational sites damaged in Chocó alone and roughly 40 schools collapsed entirely, the region faces a generational setback unless reconstruction moves faster than government timelines in remote, impoverished areas typically allow. No timeline for the school-building project has been announced. No specific dollar figure for Shakira's personal financial commitment has been disclosed beyond the $1.25 million in outside pledges she secured.
Open questions remain. The massive gap between the government's missing-persons count and civilian databases has not been addressed. The structure of the Buffett-Shakira foundation partnership is undefined publicly. And whether Colombia's national government will match the urgency of private donors and celebrity fundraisers is an open bet, one that the people of Chocó have lost before.
When governments fail the most vulnerable, private citizens and private dollars fill the gap. That is not how it should work. But in Chocó, it is how it does work, and at least someone showed up.
