When I was 5 or 6 years old, I remember watching TV and I would see these commercials. I was watching other children suffer in other parts of the world. The commercials, y’know, you could give 25 cents and save a child’s life. I think to myself, ‘I wonder how many 25 cents I could save up to save all the kids in Africa.’ I would say to myself, ‘When I grow up, and I can get rich, I’m gonna save kids all over the world.’ I just didn’t know I would be in the position to do that by the time I was a teenager. … What the little girl watching those commercials didn’t know is that you don’t have to be rich to be a humanitarian. You don’t have to be rich to help somebody.
– Rihanna (Humanitarian Speech at Harvard University)