According to new reports, everyone’s favoriate ‘bad gal’ will soon be getting a street named in her honor in her home country of Barbados. It was near Westbury New Road that RiRi was brought up, and on November 30 during a two-hour ceremony on Barbados’ 51st Independence Day, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart will honor the star and philanthropist by changing the road’s name to Rihanna Drive.
"The Government of Barbados will on Independence Day, Thursday 30th November, 2017 officially change the name of Westbury New Road located in St. Michael to Rihanna Drive in honour of Barbadian superstar Ms. Robyn Rihanna Fenty who grew up in Westbury New Road,” read a statement from the Ministry of Tourism.
While her stardom and pride in her country are easy targets to pin as to why she’s being gifted with the honor, Rihanna’s charitable and philanthropic work in the island nation and throughout the globe can certainly be tied to why she has earned the distinction of having her namesake attached to the road where she grew up. It was this year that she earned Harvard University’s Humanitarian of the Year Award, recgognizing her work in improving cancer treatment in Barbados and in setting up a college scholarship to bring Caribbean students to study in the United States aall through her Clara Lionel Foundation, named after her grandparents.
"When I was five or six years old, I remember watching TV and I would see these commercials and I was watching other children suffer in other parts of the world and you know the commercials were, 'you can give 25 cents, save a child's life,' you know?," she noted in her acceptance speech. "And I would think to myself like, I wonder how many 25 cents I could save up to save all the kids in Africa. And I would say to myself you know, 'when I grow up, when I can get rich, I'mma 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," she joked.
"All you need to do is help one person, expecting nothing in return. To me, that is a humanitarian." She added, "You don't have to be rich to be a humanitarian, you don't have to be rich to help somebody. You don't have to be famous, you don't even have to be college educated. But it starts with your neighbor... you just do whatever you can to help in any way that you can."