Despite widely publicized problems, Oprah Winfrey’s school In South Africa will be graduating its first class in January. All 72 members have been accepted into universities across the United States and Canada.
From The Grio:
HENLEY-ON-KLIP, South Africa (AP) — Mpumi Nobiva was raised by her grandmother in a neighborhood beset by poverty and crime after her mother died of AIDS. Now one of the first to graduate from Oprah Winfrey’s school, she is headed to college in North Carolina.
Winfrey spent $40 million to give her girls a campus with computer and science labs, a library and a wellness center. None paid tuition. The students are high-achievers, often from communities where schools are struggling to overcome the legacy of apartheid.
And as the South African school year nears its end, all 72 members of the school’s first graduating class have been accepted to universities in South Africa or the United States. More than a dozen have received full scholarships.
Winfrey told her students that when you teach a girl, you teach a nation.
“The first class, my class, will prove that,” said Nobiva, 18, who will study visual and performing arts at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Winfrey will be at the school for graduation ceremonies in January, school officials said Wednesday as students gathered to reflect on their experiences over the last five years.
What do you think of the progress of Oprah Winfrey’s school? Do you think the media has focused too much on the problems versus the accomplishments?