When Katy Perry joined American Idol in 2018, she became the highest-paid judge on the show with her $25 million per year salary — which is why it's hard to believe that while growing up, the singer and her sister didn't even always have food on the table.
"You want to talk about food stamps? I can talk about food stamps. You want to talk about food banks? I can talk about food banks," explained Perry, 39, in a new interview. "You want to talk about busking in the street as a teenager, hoping to make $20 to cover yourself, I can talk about that too."
The siblings' experience is what prompted them to launch the Firework Foundation, which aims to "empower children from underserved communities by igniting their inner light through the arts."
The mom-of-one's sister Angela Lerche said she hopes the organization reminds children that they too "didn't come from anything."
"[Katy] wasn't born into some musical family that had all this access," Lerche noted. "She worked so hard for so many years to get to be where she is."
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The sisters aren't just the faces of the nonprofit, as they participate every year in Camp Firework, where kids take classes in art, meditation, music and more.
"I'm up with them in the morning, and they're throwing whipped cream on me in the evening," quipped the "E,.T." singer. "The kids know me as the girl that sang 'Roar' or 'Dark Horse,' but I hope [by the end] they [think], 'I too can live out my dreams like Katy Perry. She's just like me, in a lot of goofy ways.'"
Lerche said she's "grateful" for the opportunity to help so many children.
"It's so overwhelming because you hear so many stories from these kids, and what it's like back home and what they're dealing with," she spilled. "They give so much to us, and I'm just grateful that we're able to show them that there is something better out there."
"If in a hundred years nobody knows Katy Perry or the song 'Firework,' but they know what the Firework Foundation is, then I'll have fulfilled my purpose," added the pop star.
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Another one of Perry's purposes in life is being a mother to her and fiancé Orlando Bloom's daughter, Daisy Dove, 3.
"She's beautiful, she's growing fast, big, strong and healthy. And you can't be more blessed than that," the British actor, 47, gushed last year of the tot.
People spoke to Perry and her sister.
