Latina pop star Shakira was honoured for her humanitarian work by the United Nations (UN) in New York City on Monday. Other winners who showed up to accept their awards — a Spanish contemporary sculpture — included Ela Bhatt, founder of the SEWA Cooperative Bank in India which has provided microcredit loans to 800,000 women; former Spanish Red Cross president Cristina Macaya; Brazilian writer Nelida Pinon; and Consuelo Ciscar, who has promoted cultural and arts programs in Valencia, Spain.
The winners, including Latin pop star Shakira, Czech supermodel Karolina Kurkova, received awards yesterday and then watched a fashion show featuring clothes from nine developing countries, including India, partly made by women trying to escape poverty. More than 400 fans and fashionistas joined VIP guests for the two events and a panel on Poverty, Women and Human Rights. It focused on the success of microcredit loans, which hundreds of millions of women have used to start businesses, and the need to help the 1 billion people who still live on $1 a day or less.
Shakira was celebrated for her tireless campaigning in her native Colombia, where she started a charitable foundation. She said, “Let’s not forget at the end of this day when we all go home, 960 children will have died in Latin America.
“As part of a generation that has so many ideas and technologies and things that my parents’ generation didn’t have access to. Let’s take advantage of this historical opportunity we have within reach to make this world a better place.”
There was disappointment in the crowd that several famous winners sent representatives to collect their awards — including actress Angelina Jolie, Queen Rania of Jordan, Sen Hillary Clinton, and Kerry Kennedy, who founded a human rights center named after her late father, Robert F Kennedy.

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