Madonna’s charity organization, Raising Malawi, has had to scrap plans for a school that it sunk $3.8 million into and failed to get off the ground.
Raising Malawi was founded by Madonna and her friend and fellow Kabbalahist Michael Berg, with a goal of building a school in the impoverished nation of Malawi where the singer has adopted 2 children, her son, David and daughter, Mercy.
The project was in so much trouble an outside advisory organization, the Global Philanthropy Group, was hired to find out what was going so terribly wrong.
Trevor Neilson of the group said they found that the $3.8 million went to architects, office building space, salaries and 2 cars for employees not even hired.
“Despite $3.8 million having been spent by the previous management team, the project has not broken ground, there was no title to the land and there was, over all, a startling lack of accountability on the part of the management team in Malawi and the management team in the United States,” Neilson said. “We have yet to determine exactly what happened to all of that $3.8 million. We have not accounted for all the funds that were used.”
The Board of Directors of Raising Malawi, the executive director, Phillipe Van Den Bosche, who is also the boyfriend of Madonna’s trainer Tracy Anderson, and Anjimile Oponyo, who was chosen to head the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls.were all either replaced or fired.
“A thoughtful decision has been made to discontinue plans for the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, as it was originally conceived,” said Berg.
Madonna and the organization are regrouping and choosing new ways to help the country where few children, especially girls have the chance at education.
“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.”
[image: WENN.com]
