“The dream was never simply to build a school. It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women,” she said
Credit: Courtesy HARPO
NEED TO KNOW
- The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy of Girls in South Africa will be closing after 2027 and transitioning its operations back to local officials
- Winfrey will instead focuses on an “expanded” scholarship program for girls there
- “Overall, there will be double the amount of girls who will have access to education through this model,” a rep for Winfrey says
The South Africa school that Oprah Winfrey opened nearly two decades ago will be closing and transitioning its operations back to local officials while Winfrey focuses on an “expanded” scholarship program for girls there, she announced this week.
“The dream was never simply to build a school. It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women,” Winfrey, 72, said in a statement on Wednesday, July 29, announcing that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy of Girls will end operations in its current form at the end of 2027.
From there, the provincial government will take over and continue operating the facility as a school, a rep for Winfrey tells PEOPLE.
The academy will graduate two more classes of girls and the remaining students “will go to other top-tier schools with their tuition paid for in total by Ms. Winfrey through their graduation,” the rep says.
In her statement, Winfrey said that her mission “doesn’t end with one campus. It continues in every girl whose future can be transformed through education.”
“I’m excited that this next chapter will allow us to reach even more young women across South Africa and continue the promise that began more than 20 years ago,” she continued.
Credit: Courtesy HARPO
The scholarship program will begin after the academy’s students have graduated, according to Winfrey’s rep, who says that “overall, there will be double the amount of girls who will have access to education through this model.”
“That is the core of the decision to shift to this new model after seeing the success of the students the past 20 years,” the rep says.
More than 1,000 girls have graduated from Winfrey’s academy since it opened in 2007.
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After what Winfrey called a “devastating” early controversy with a staff member accused and later acquitted of abuse, the school went on over the years to educate young women “from disadvantaged communities across South Africa,” according to a news release shared by the academy.
The mogul herself invested hundreds of millions of dollars.
According to a study cited in the news release, almost all of the graduates they surveyed said they pursued higher education and “reported that their education positively transformed their families.”
“This school is my greatest legacy,” Winfrey told PEOPLE in a 2019 cover story. “These girls are my deepest, greatest joy.”
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