He is just one week old but Sasha Piqué Mebarak has already been thrust into the spotlight... and it’s all for a good cause.
The second-born son of Shakira and her Barcelona FC player partner Gerard Piqué has made his public debut in a sweet image the singer posted to the Unicef World Baby Shower website, which is aiming to help poverty-stricken people around the world.Sharing the snap of the dark haired tot, Shakira wrote: ‘We’d like to introduce you to Sasha Piqué
It comes just one day after Shakira posted a picture of Sasha’s foot to her Twitter page and wrote: ‘I have Daddy’s feet, it looks like I’ve been playing football my whole life.’
Sasha’s name is understood to be of Greek and Russian descent and means ‘Warrior’ and ‘Defendant of mankind.’
The singer welcomed her second son with Gerard into the world at a hospital in Barcelona last Thursday night, where she underwent a scheduled Caesarean section.
Gerard played for FC Barcelona in Madrid around 24 hours before the birth, and his team ran out 3-2 winners over Atletico Madrid.
The couple are expected to continue a family tradition and make their latest arrival an associate member of FC Barcelona.
The musician began dating the sportsman in 2010 and previously spoke about the joy which she gets from being a mother, saying, ‘motherhood is everything to me.’ She also praised her partner’s hands-on parenting style.
She said: ‘He is very involved with his son. He is always there for him, and that’s a big advantage for me as I cannot imagine it any other way.’
Meanwhile, the picture of Sasha on the Unicef website expands the charitable couple’s original World Baby Shower initiative after they came up with the concept following the birth of Milan in 2013.
Explaining the thinking behind the campaign, Shakira explains: ‘Now that we are soon welcoming our second child we want to help other children around the world and also contribute to a long-lasting solution for getting children living in extreme poverty the supplies they need to survive.
‘We also want other parents to feel compelled to do the same. With the explosion of social media, celebrities aren’t the only ones who have platforms that can reach mass audiences, and we want this movement to keep going long after our baby shower has ended, so we want to invite them to host their own baby showers with Unicef as well.’
Shakira has urged her fans to head to Facebook to buy ‘inspired gifts’, which will be transformed into donations for the cause.
These include midwifery kits with medical equipment for safe delivery of 50 babies, measles and polio vaccines, blankets, and baby scales.
The celebrity couple’s first virtual World Baby Shower to benefit Unicef’s mission for children was held from January to February 2013 and as a result, over 80,000 children were vaccinated against polio while nearly four tonnes of therapeutic food helped children suffering from malnutrition.
