HispanicBusiness

Colombian pop star Shakira on Sunday visited the site in Haiti where her foundation will build a school for child survivors of the devastating earthquake.

The 33-year-old winner of multiple Grammy Awards met with a few dozen children at the site in Haiti's capital, Port-Au-Prince, which is in ruins after a quake on Jan. 12 killed as many as 300,000 people.

"We need to think about the future of this country and of how Haiti's children can be useful to their societies tomorrow," she said, according to Reuters
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Shakira's Pies Descalzos (Barefoot) Foundation has built several charitable schools in Colombia.

Her effort comes during the same month that pop diva Madonna traveled to Malawi, Africa to build a school for orphaned girls.

Shakira came of age in early 1990s as a virtuosic musician in Colombia, but broke out internationally with her 2001 release of "Laundry Service."

She is well known for belly-dancing barefoot on stage, and cites as major influences western rockers such as the The Beatles, Nirvana, The Ramones and U2.