Max Portughes for AOL
Backstage at the Free the Children-organized youth rally for social change, Furtado revealed that was indeed where this money came from.
"It's my proceeds from the [Gaddafi] show along with my own funds. I wanted to make a substantial donation. I also definitely wanted to move forward to the future and turn something that was a learning experience into something very positive, and I think that makes it more powerful," she told AOL.
"It also shows I'm student of life, just like everybody out there, and I think the world is a really complicated place. It's OK to admit that sometimes, but to move forward and learn from it."
As well as the Kenyan school, Furtado's donation to global development charity Free the Children will be used to fund other programs supporting girls in North African and Middle Eastern countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Gaza and, yes, Libya.
"I wanted to create something sustainable," she said, "and I wanted to work with women. I was very inspired by my mother, she's very strong and worked very hard and she instilled in us the importance of education even though she could only carry her own education so far growing up in the Azores at the time. Education is a such a universal theme and girls feeling empowered is a very important current theme right now."
The Gaddafi performance fee Furtado received was perhaps embarrassing to admit to last February as the Libyan revolution was revving up, but the Canadian singer was only one of several pop stars paid with Mommar's dirty money, including Mariah Carey, 50 Cent , Usher and Beyoncé, the latter of whom said in March she had donated her fee to Haitian relief months earlier.
"I'm the perfect example of somebody whose eyes were really opened by the work of a great organization like Free the Children.
Nathaniel Harris
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