Long before she was a global pop star, Shakira Mebarak was a teenager in Barranquilla, Colombia. She founded the Pies Descalzos Foundation, known in English as the Barefoot Foundation, in 1997, when she was still in her early twenties, with a focus on education for children in poor communities. Nearly three decades later the foundation is still built around the same idea: that a well-run public school can anchor a neighborhood.
In September 2023 Shakira returned to her hometown to inaugurate a new school in the Nuevo Bosque neighborhood, the Centro Educativo Nuevo Bosque-Pies Descalzos. According to coverage from Atalayar, the building spans more than 6,000 square meters and is designed to serve roughly 1,000 students a year across primary and secondary education.
The design reflects the foundation's view that a school should be more than classrooms. Reporting on the inauguration described 22 regular classrooms and four preschool classrooms, two laboratories, art rooms, a library, a dining room and a kitchen, with the complex also functioning as a community center for parents and other residents. Local accounts noted that a surrounding population of more than 53,000 people was meant to benefit from the site.
It was not a quick build. The project had been under way since 2018, with pandemic-era delays stretching the timeline, and outlets including Forbes Colombia reported a total cost in the region of four million dollars. That figure, drawn from local reporting, is the kind of detail worth confirming with the foundation directly rather than treating as final.
The school was also a partnership rather than a solo act, which is part of what makes the model durable. Coverage credited the Barranquilla mayor's office alongside the 'la Caixa' Foundation, the FC Barcelona Foundation and the LCI Education Foundation, Shakira describing them as allies and friends in the effort. Pooling a celebrity's visibility with civic and institutional partners is a recurring theme in serious philanthropy, because schools need public systems to keep running after the ribbon is cut.
Nuevo Bosque is not the foundation's first school, and that track record matters more than any single opening. Pies Descalzos has delivered a string of educational projects in vulnerable areas of Colombia over the years, and has spoken about further institutions planned in regions such as La Guajira. A foundation that keeps building in the same places, rather than appearing once for a photo, is a different kind of commitment.
For readers who want the authoritative account of the Nuevo Bosque school, its enrollment, and how to support or follow the foundation's work, the Pies Descalzos Foundation is the place to confirm details. Its own publications are where enrollment figures and new-project plans are kept up to date.
Source date: September 16, 2023. Contextual photograph; it does not depict the people or the specific event described in this article. Photo: Curtis & Miller, Public domain ↗.
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