Rihanna's used her fame to accomplish some incredible things. That's why she's about to receive the Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award from Harvard University.
RiRi was named the 2017 Harvard University Humanitarian of the Year largely for her work promoting education and healthcare.
In 2012, she founded the Clara Lionel Foundation to "support and fund innovative and effective education and health programs around the world." Since last year, it's included the Clara and Lionel Foundation Scholarship Program to help students from Brazil, Barbados, Cuba, Haiti, Grenada, Guyana, and Jamaica attend U.S. colleges. "Higher education will help provide perspective, opportunities, and learning to a group of kids who really deserve it. I am thrilled to be able to do this," she told USA Today when she started the scholarship.
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She's also helped many other kids receive educations as an ambassador for the Global Partnership for Education and Global Citizen Project. She was in Malawi last week for the campaign, People reports, and performed at last year's Global Citizen Festival, which helps end poverty.
Rihanna also built a center dedicated to breast cancer at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados, where she grew up. She also appeared in a World AIDS Day PSA with Prince William, where they pricked their fingers to demonstrate how simple getting an HIV test is.
She joins an eclectic group of honorees. Past recipients include girls' education advocate Malala Yousafzai, Star Wars and The Lion King voice actor James Earl Jones, and four recent U.N. Secretaries General.
She'll accept the award at a ceremony on campus Tuesday, February 28. If you were hoping to sneak in to catch a glimpse of the pop star, though, you're out of luck. According to The Harvard Gazette, you need a Harvard ID to get a ticket.
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