Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy For Girls

Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls is a girls boarding school in Henley on Klip, South Africa. The school opened in 2007 in order to provide impoverished, South African girls with leadership and educational opportunities. The project is just one of the many efforts done by philanthropists and celebrities to “save Africa”, perpetuating the idea of the white, or in this case, the American saviour. However, Oprah’s creation of the OWLAG is not only a charitable undertaking, but is something she has a personal connection to. In the video we watched in class, Oprah gives us a glimpse into her life growing up. Her impoverished background and “humble beginnings” motivated her to build a school in South Africa to help bright, young women

The school’s policies on visits and communication with family members lead parents to believe the academy is more of a reformatory or prison than a school. Parents are only allowed one visit per month. The maximum number of visitors a student may have at any one time is four, which must be scheduled at least two weeks in advance, hindering families with more than 4 members (Prins). After reading these visitation rules, I can not help but notice its striking resemblance to the US’ federal prisons’ regulation for inmates of four hours of visiting time per month. Students are only allowed phone and email correspondence on the weekends. Parents aren’t even allowed to bring their daughters treats because of the academy’s strict diet for the students. These rules exist to “not disrupt the school spirit on the weekends” and are in place for “the security and well being of the girls” according to the executive head of the school, John Samuels (Prins). This statement holds the implication that the school and it administrators know what’s better for the students than their own parents. So not only are the parents denied access to their children, but they are put in the back seat when it comes to what’s best for their children. The strict rules and regulations are surprising given the school’s mission to improve the lives of these girls. However, by enforcing these rules, the only thing the

According to the academy’s website, its vision is to develop leaders who “will lead the charge to transform themselves, their communities, and the larger world around them” (owla.co.za). I find this ironic given the school’s practices. Not only does the school isolate the students from their families, but also from their communities and culture. Through physically removing the girls from their African culture and placing them in an Americanized environment characterized by material and excess, the school is digging up the cultural roots of these girls and replacing them. In addition to removing the students from their cultures, the school also take no measurement to preserve them. The only languages taught at the school are English, Afrikaans, IsiZulu, and SeSotho, simply because they are the languages offered in the IB MYP and IEB programs (owla.co.za). This to an extent is understandable since there needs to be standardized languages for instruction and second language acquisition. However, combined with the school’s denial of food being brought in by families and its stringent visitation policies, there is virtually no way the girls can connect with their cultures, leading to the school’s encouragement of the breakdown of their cultural