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December 28th, 2012, 15:41 GMT · By

Madonna Builds 10 Schools in Malawi

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Madonna builds ten schools in Malawi
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Every once in a while, Madonna gets significant amounts of media attention not because of her peculiar and sometimes even shocking behavior on and off stage, but because of her commitment to help those less fortunate.

The news that the celebrity has recently finished building and has inaugurated ten primary schools in Malawi is one of these occasions.

Said ten schools are actually the result of a collaboration between Madonna, her charity Raising Malawi and global nonprofit organization BuildOn, and Look to the Stars reports that they can accommodate as many as 4,871 local children.

For the time being, only six of these ten educational facilities are up and running, yet it is the singer's hope that the remainder will also start being used to educate kids living in Malawi's villages as early as January 2013.

Interestingly enough, work on these schools debuted towards the beginning of 2012, and at that moment, it was believed that this development project would take about 18 months to complete.

The fact that some schools are already in use goes to show that both Madonna and the organization working with her were quite eager to help children in Malawi.

Commenting on her decision to build educational facilities in this part of the world and on this charitable project, Madonna stated as follows:

“I am overjoyed that my commitment along with BuildOn's to help educate the children of Malawi has come to fruition. In a country where girls have little opportunity for education, it's additionally inspiring to know that more than half the students attending will be young girls.”

“The fact that more than 4,800 children in Malawi will get to go to school next year is a tremendous step forward for their individual growth and the growth of Malawi,” the celebrity went on to add.

For those unaware, Malawi is presently listed as one of the least developed countries in the world, which is why facilitating its residents' access to education is a praiseworthy endeavor.


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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: Jimbo on 29 Dec 2012, 05:14 UTC reply to this comment

Excellent. I'm extremely impressed.
From now on your songs will sound better, ha.
Jim


Comment #2 by: Peter Nkosi on 29 Dec 2012, 14:04 UTC reply to this comment

First of all, let me acknowledge that Madonna's project is helping in the education of some children in Malawi.

However, there are some important aspects of the project which are being ignored by the World's Press. What are being built are not ten "schools" as we would normally understand the word to mean, but instead ten double-classrooms. In addition, the beneficiaries are not sitting on their asps waiting for the completion of turn-key projects. Instead, villagers are providing much labour and material for the project. Madonna is benefiting from the world-wide publicity which she generates for a relatively small monetary outlay, and acknowledges the self-help only on obscure webpages.

How does one describe a school? To my mind it would consist of eight classrooms for Standards 1 to 8, a small administration block, and toilets for some hundreds of people. In reference (1), there are some photos of one of the "schools" which has been finished. All that can be seen is a single building, consisting of two classrooms. That building is termed a "school" by Raising Malawi (RM). At one time, there were other photos of "schools" on the RM website, each showing only a single building of two classrooms, but these have now been taken down, presumably because they revealed the truth (2). However, BuildOn's website shows photos of three of the "schools" (3), all of them just a double classroom.

Madonna does not mention the self help component in her project. As BuildOn state, "The community provides a gender-equal leadership team, voluntary unskilled labour, land for the school, local materials ..." (4). So the villagers have moulded and burned all the bricks, and during construction have provided the unskilled labour, such as digging foundations, supplying water, and mixing cement.

Madonna's commitment to Malawi has been slashed from the multi-million dollar girls academy which she first announced. This was due to very little of the money raised managing to reach Malawi, but instead being misappropriated by her First World friends. Her commitment now is USD300,000. Part of that I suspect was trousered by the high profile consulting firm, Global Philanthropy Group (GPG). That firm provides philanthropic services for high net-worth individuals such as Madonna, and they have offices in four big cities in the US. I expect that it is GPG which has spun each basic, unfurnished double-classroom into a "school" so as to get as much mileage as possible from the greatly reduced commitment.

Why do the World's Press not do a little research into what is being claimed by Madonna, to put it in its proper context? Why simply regurgitate what has been issued in her press releases.

If I have been unfair to Madonna, then please let me know.

Finally, it has to be repeated that Madonna's project is indeed helping to educate some of Malawi's children.

(1) http://www.raisingmalawi.org/blog/entry/our-third-school-in-partnership-with-buildon-is-complete

(2) http://www.raisingmalawi.org/blog/entry/update-from-malawi/ & http://www.raisingmalawi.org/blog/entry/photo-first-raising-malawi-school-completed-in-kabila/ , photos now removed!

(3) http://buildonfromthefield.org/2012/12/26/buildon-raising-malawi-complete-10-schools-in-malawi/

(4) http://www.raisingmalawi.org/blog/entry/buildon-breaks-ground-on-first-school-built-in-partnership-with-raising-mal/ Original BuildOn link no longer exists

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