"I wouldn't change my past if you gave me a trillion dollars," he told CNBC's Tania Bryer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. "If you say here, here's a trillion dollars, give me your memories of the past or this trillion bucks. When he was a child, his mother signed their family up to hand out food to poor families in their neighborhood, he explained. So, my family signed up to give the free food to the poor families, and we were one of the poor families," he said in the interview. Many of the students in the program go on to high-ranking colleges and study engineering-related degrees, will.i.am told CNBC.

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