The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls - South Africa (OWLAG) is a boarding school for girls, grades 8-12, in Henley on Klip, Gauteng Province, South Africa. Oprah Winfrey is glowing with pride, surrounded by the white-clad students of her all-girls academy.
“I am one proud mama and for once I think I know what that feels like for real,” Winfrey said before the graduation of the first class of her South Africa-based school last week. “It feels like a real sense of accomplishment."
The school is a project begun by the American entrepreneur and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey in 2002, after discussion with former South African president Nelson Mandela in 2000. The institution opened in January 2007 with about 150 girls in 7th and 8th grades. The Academy is expected to grow by one grade each year until it reaches full capacity in 2011, with approximately 450 girls in grades 7 through 12.
When the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opened in Johannesburg in 2007, Nelson Mandela, Tina Turner, Sydney Poitier, Spike Lee and Oprah herself attended a lavish ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the landmark boarding school, founded with $40 million of Oprah's money.
The TV star had every reason to be jubilant: In 2007, she had hand-picked all these students as she established the $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls to provide world-class high school education to underprivileged children from South Africa and teach them leadership skills. Winfrey poured $40 million into the 28-building campus, which is spread across 22 lush acres. It has computer and science labs, and a library, theater and wellness center.
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The Academy's Mission and Philosophy
Winfrey, who overcame economic hardship as well as racial and gender challenges to become one of the world’s most successful and influential women, says education can help girls from all backgrounds to raise their aspirations. “You want to change the world, you change a girl’s life,” she said. The 57-year-old media mogul, who now runs her own channel, appropriately titled OWN, said her next mission is to continue championing the rights of young girls to a better education.
“In the beginning, I think we had teachers who were like, ‘oh, the girls, they come here disadvantaged.’ So we’ve eliminated that word ‘disadvantaged,’ because disadvantaged allows other people to look at you like you have some kind of disease, and they lower their expectations for what you can be. “I said, ‘nobody has a disadvantaged brain. Nobody is here with a disadvantaged mind."
Oprah's school for girls opens in South Africa.
“You were born in the year that apartheid ended in this country,” Winfrey tells her school’s students. “That means that you are a child of freedom."
Winfrey offered that her vision for the Leadership Academy was to provide a vehicle for mentoring academically talented and disadvantaged girls with "that 'It' quality" to provide them with opportunities to "change the face of a nation," make a difference in the world and become future leaders of South Africa. To change how women are viewed, Winfrey added during an interview, one must look for an opportunity "'to change the paradigm, to change the way not only these girls think ...
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The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls-located near Johannesburg and educating girls in Grades 8 through 12-is therefore a wonderfully appropriate gift to the people of South Africa, one that will endure over many lifetimes. When I went to the opening of her school, I looked at the shining faces of these young women and thought every one of them has the potential to be an Oprah Winfrey. The school is important because it will change the trajectory of these girls' lives and it will brighten the future of all women in South Africa. Oprah understands that in Africa, women and girls have often been doubly disadvantaged.
Clinton predicted that the school would change the lives of many young women and interviewed Winfrey to find out why she decided to build the school. The academy was honoured by Bill Clinton when he featured it in his book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World as an example of how to give back to the world.
Controversies and Challenges
But for all its success and money spent, Winfrey’s academy has not been without its controversies. Seven students have been punished for violating the code of conduct at Oprah Winfrey’s school for disadvantaged girls in South Africa, the second controversy to hit the fledgling institution since it opened in 2007.Halcombe declined to say what led to the violations because there are minors involved.
This isn’t the first time events at the elite girls school have upset Winfrey. The talk-show queen said she was devastated after a woman overseeing a dormitory at the academy was accused of abuse and sexual assault months after the school opened. The woman’s trial has not yet ended. But less than a year later, six of the 152 students who had been personally selected by Oprah to attend the institution came forward to accuse dorm matron Virginia Tiny Makgobo of sexual and physical abuse. (Makgobo pleaded not guilty; her trial was ongoing.) "It has shaken me to my core," Winfrey said of returning to South Africa with a team of private detectives to investigate the allegations and personally speak with the girls.
A few months after opening, the school was rocked by an abuse scandal when one of its matrons was accused of molesting students. The women was acquitted in 2010. Last year, a student concealed her pregnancy and then secretly gave birth at the school.
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“I’m disappointed that several of our students chose to disregard the school’s rules,” Winfrey said in a statement issued by her production company HARPO. “It’s disheartening when any student has to be suspended or expelled and it’s a process that involves serious review and consideration. We will not tolerate a violation of school policy and dishonesty.”
Academic Success and Future Prospects
“When I look at them, I see where they’ve been, I see where they’ve come from. “And now 100% of this class has been accepted into colleges, 10% going to the United States. Before the graduation, the girls received intensive financial planning counseling and assistance to help them with life beyond the academy, school officials say.
“I’ve always believed in the girls,” she said. Overall, the boarding school, which spans 52 acres in the small town of Henley-on-Klip near Johannesburg, accommodates 400 South African girls of any race, color or origin, aged 12 to 18.
As for rationale of the lavishness of the school, Winfrey continued by saying that "[i]f you are surrounded by beautiful things and wonderful teachers who inspire you, that beauty brings out the beauty in you."
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