Madonna?s Plans To Build A School In Malawi Crash And Burn
Plans For The Raising Malawi Academy for Girls Collapse
In October of 2009, Madonna made her way to Malawi to break ground on the site where the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls was meant to be built. She returned to the site in April of last year to ceremonially lay the foundation of the school, which was meant to open this year. Today we learn that the Academy will NOT open this year because the board of directors for Raising Malawi has been ousted due to financial mismanagement.
A high-profile charitable foundation set up to build a school for impoverished girls in Malawi, founded by the singer Madonna and fellow devotees of a prominent Jewish mysticism movement, has collapsed after spending $3.8 million on a project that never came to fruition. The board of directors of the organization, Raising Malawi, has been ousted and replaced by a caretaker board, including Madonna and her manager, officials with the organization said Thursday. Its executive director, who is the boyfriend of Madonna?s former trainer, Tracy Anderson, left in October amid criticism of his management style and cost overruns for the school. These included what auditors described as outlandish expenditures on salaries, cars, office space and a golf course membership, free housing and a car and driver for the school?s director. Most strikingly, the plans to build a $15 million school for about 400 girls in the poor southeastern African country of 15 million ? which had drawn financial support from Hollywood and society circles, as well as the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre International, an organization devoted to Jewish mysticism ? have been officially abandoned. That prospective move set off a fierce backlash when first raised earlier this year, with Malawi officials saying they were stunned and asserting that Madonna was blaming management breakdowns because she had been unable to raise the money she had promised. ?A thoughtful decision has been made to discontinue plans for the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, as it was originally conceived,? Michael Berg, a co-director of the Kabbalah Centre and the co-founder of Raising Malawi, said Thursday in an e-mail to the center?s members who had contributed to the project. The e-mail announced the replacement of the board of directors. Madonna has lent her name, reputation and $11 million of her money to the organization that she founded with Mr. Berg. She has been a regular visitor to Malawi, attending at least two ceremonies at what would have been the site of the school in Lilongwe, and has adopted two children from the country. On Thursday, in conceding the shortcomings of her charity, Madonna issued a statement saying she was still intent on using the organization, which has raised $18 million so far, to advance improvements in the beleaguered nation. ?There?s a real education crisis in Malawi,? she said. ?Sixty-seven percent of girls don?t go to secondary school, and this is simply unacceptable. Our team is going to work hard to address this in every way we can.? She and her aides offered no explanation of why, given her high interest in the project, she had not noticed the problems as they began unfolding ? Raising Malawi will not disband and will instead use its money in different ways to help the poor in a country where Madonna has sought to become a major philanthropic presence, foundation officials said.
This is really sad news. It is unthinkable that people can be so cruel as to pilfer money from a charitable organization like this just for their own financial gain. I was really rooting for Raising Malawi to successfully build their school. In the end, the only people to really suffer are those who would?ve benefited from the education that would?ve been made available to them ? the young girls of Malawi have been robbed of that opportunity. As disillusioning as it may be, I?m glad to know that Raising Malawi will not abandon their philanthropic endeavors in the region altogether. Still ? this is very sad news.
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