Oprah's Leadership School in Africa

Oprah Winfrey has founded a new all-girl leadership academy in South Africa. On a TV interview I recently saw, Oprah said that this was the fulfillment of a promise that she made to Nelson Mandela and that accomplishing this is what she feels she was put on earth to do. Fulfilling this project has cost $40 million so far.

This past August, Oprah Winfrey personally selected all of the 73 girls aged 11-12 , who came to be interviewed, to attend her new school. More children from other parts of South Africa will be chosen later this year.

Lisa Halliday, a spokeswoman for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation, said that in the first year the aim is to admit 150 students and that ultimately there will be places for 450 girls in grades 7-12. South African education authorities donated the site south of Johannesburg, and believe it will be a positive thing for South Africa. Local education department spokesman Lusufi Banyaza said: "We used to have private schools denying access to the poor on cost grounds. Now girls will be able to get access to quality private education."

A select number of girls, that is. In the TV segment I was watching, Oprah said her only criteria was that the girls have good grades and come from poor families. My knee-jerk reaction to that was "well, what about a girl who excelled in language class but was doing average in math and science, would she even have a shot?" Someone else might have wondered why it's all girls but Oprah made it fairly clear that she somehow identifies with these girls in terms of how it was for her in school.

Before making any hasty assumptions, however, I wanted to learn a little more about everything. You can read daily papers from any country in the world online on RefDesk. Many African countries have an English language daily. So I went to look up some South African articles about Oprah's visit. A lot of the content in the South African dailies requires a paid subscription so I couldn't get to the August articles. I'm not sure if the articles concerning Oprah's South African visit would be exactly the same as the ones that went out over the AP. They do get edited. I did find a related article from August 25, 2006, about how some con artists found a way to exploit Oprah's visit:

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Police questioned eight people Friday after discovering an investment scam that used Oprah Winfrey's name days after she interviewed prospective pupils in South Africa for her new all-girls school.

Some 500 people crowded into a community center in the eastern city of Grahamstown after being told that they had to make a simple payment of $1.40 with the promise of then receiving $168 per month for 10 years. Police said Winfrey knew nothing about it. Authorities who went to the community center Thursday after hearing locals boast about their pending windfall were shouted at and told to go away, the South African Press Association reported Friday.

"This process is believed to have started earlier this week," Mali Govender told SAPA. "By word of mouth the community were informed of this easy way of making money." Police confiscated 160 applications and returned nearly $280, he said.

A similar article stated that "Scams are a frequent occurrence in South Africa, targeted mainly at the poor and uneducated." I thought scams were a regular, if not frequent, occurrence everywhere. In the wake of the Tennessee woman who killed her pastor husband after becoming involved in a Nigerian scam, I'm not sure being uneducated is even a requirement to fall victim to a scam.

Another more interesting article I found about the state of affairs of education in South Africa is on IOL, the biggest news, classifieds and info site on the Web in South Africa. (The article, by Education Reporter, was originally published on page 5 of Cape Argus on October 06, 2006). Since this article involves local education and doesn't have any famous names in it, like Oprah's, it was surely just for local consumption:

Teachers must step out of their comfort zones and respond to challenges in education, says Muavia Gallie of the SA Council of Educators. Speaking at a World Teachers Day conference in Cape Town, Gallie urged teachers to take responsibility for education and to commit to change in the classroom.

"Our job is to make children succeed in life," said Gallie. "Teachers must not wait on the Education Department to do things; each of us should take responsibly for education." Gallie, a former teacher in Bonteheuwel, said he was aware of curriculum challenges, violence at schools and the shortage of resources and teachers.

He said teachers at poor schools had to put in "double the effort to make pupils succeed". He also urged teachers to approach colleagues not taking the profession seriously. "We know that among ourselves there are colleagues who do not deserve their pay cheque. We must get to the point where we will tell them to go to their classrooms and teach," he said. …

It does seem like even half a million would go a long way to helping these teachers, and with those attitudes, they certainly deserve it. It's a pretty common problem, and our poor school districts have plenty of good teachers fighting an uphill battle as well. Oprah has had shows where she has honored teachers, I believe. Oprah's charity foundation has, in fact, awarded hundreds of educational grants to support the education and empowerment of women, children and families all over the globe.

"Education is the way to move mountains, to build bridges, to change the world," Oprah says. "Education is the path to the future. I believe that education is indeed freedom. With God's help, these girls will be the future leaders on the path to peace in South Africa and the world."

That is Oprah's vision: She is training future leaders for Africa.

"The money means nothing to me," 52-year-old Oprah Winfrey told CNN. "When I look at these girls, I see me. That's why I want to give them everything I didn't have growing up. These are the leaders of tomorrow's Africa."

Another school named the African Leadership Academy is currently scheduled to open in Gauteng, South Africa in September 2008. The most talented 15-18 year old students, both male and female, from all 54 countries in Africa will gather to spend two years developing their skills as leaders and entrepreneurs before entering the world's finest universities.