Eight young dancers from Kampala, Uganda had never seen a beach before, since their home country is landlocked. That changed when Colombian superstar Shakira brought all eight members of the Triplets Ghetto Kids to the sand in South Florida following their appearance at the FIFA World Cup final halftime show.
The under-18 dance troupe — Ivan, Ricky, Joseph, Brighton, Kesha, Jojo, Ciara and Ketra — traveled home with Shakira after performing alongside her at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in July, according to the Miami Herald. Shakira performed the FIFA World Cup anthem “Dai Dai” during the halftime show, and the paper reports she shared a carousel of photos and video documenting her time with the dancers in South Florida, including their beach outing.
Per the Herald's report, Shakira said the past few days were filled with inexplicable love and that she found it difficult to say goodbye to the young performers. She said the dancers transformed every place they went and touched every person they met, and that despite their different continent, culture and language, she loved them like children of her own. She also extended an open invitation for the troupe to return anytime.
From Kampala's Streets to the World's Biggest Stage
The Triplets Ghetto Kids trace their origins to Kampala's Katwe slum, where the group was founded in 2014 by Dauda Kavuma, a former math teacher and orphan who grew up on the streets and began using dance to protect and support vulnerable children, according to AS USA. Kavuma had established the underlying foundation years earlier, in 2007, after surviving extreme poverty himself. The troupe now operates as the public face of the Inspire Ghetto Kids Foundation, a nonprofit that uses the arts to help disadvantaged and orphaned children.
That foundation supports 60 children between the ages of 4 and 16 from impoverished backgrounds, providing shelter, food, medical care and formal education under the motto “Making Life Better Through Dance,” per BellaNaija. The group first went viral in 2014 after posting a homemade street dance video set to Ugandan singer Eddy Kenzo's track “Sitya Loss,” which prompted Kenzo to cast them in his official music video and launched their commercial career, according to Olympics.com's account of the troupe's history. Revenue from that song reportedly allowed the original child dancers to return to school.
A Decade of Global Stars Opening Doors
The Miami trip continues a pattern of international stars using their platforms to elevate the Kampala group. American rapper French Montana flew to Kampala in March 2017 to feature the Ghetto Kids in his “Unforgettable” music video after discovering their YouTube routines, later donating $100,000 to build a maternal healthcare center in Uganda and bringing the children to perform at the 2017 BET Awards in Los Angeles, according to Global Citizen.
In April 2023, the group — performing as the Triplets Ghetto Kids — made television history on Britain's Got Talent when judge Bruno Tonioli pressed the Golden Buzzer in the middle of their audition, the first time in the show's history an act received the honor while still dancing on stage. The children kept dancing without missing a beat as confetti rained down on them.
By July 2026, the group had built a global digital following exceeding 9 million followers on Instagram, 13 million on TikTok, and more than 2.6 billion cumulative YouTube views, according to figures reported by Olympics.com. The troupe had also performed at FIFA World Cup promotional events in Qatar in 2022 and staged a halftime show at Paris Saint-Germain's Parc des Princes stadium in January 2023, where the children reportedly met football stars including Kylian Mbappé before taking the field, per Wikipedia's history of the group.
Shakira's Long Run at the World Cup
Shakira's July performance of “Dai Dai” made her the first Latin artist to contribute songs to four separate FIFA World Cup tournaments, following “Hips Don't Lie” in 2006, “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)” in 2010, and “La La La” in 2014, according to Wikipedia. The July 19 halftime show at MetLife Stadium marked the first-ever official halftime concert in World Cup history, co-produced by FIFA and Global Citizen to raise $100 million for the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, extending the tournament's traditional 15-minute interval into an 11-minute multi-artist concert.
Following the South Florida trip, the Triplets Ghetto Kids returned home to Kampala this month, where hundreds of Ugandans reportedly gathered in the streets to welcome them back, according to posts shared on Facebook. The troupe announced plans to place their official World Cup match ball, gifted to the dancers in Miami, in a local museum. Shakira's World Cup schedule previously intersected with her own touring plans, as Hoodline reported when she announced her Dallas tour stop amid the tournament's chaos earlier this year.
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