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Doesn't look like it. And why are males excluded?
Meet the Graduates of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls
Meet the Graduates of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls
The first graduates of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls take flight.
By Stephanie Palumbo
Photo: Benny Gool/Harpo
Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls graduated its first senior class. The idea for the school was sparked more than a decade ago, in a conversation over tea with Nelson Mandela at his home in Qunu, South Africa. When he said that poverty could be defeated through education, Oprah agreed, musing that she would like to build a school in South Africa one day. Mandela arranged a meeting with the education ministerāthat evening!āto discuss Oprah's plans. "I really thought one day I would build the school," she said in her speech at graduation. "I didn't mean that day."
Seven years and more than $40 million later, the academyāa boarding school with a 52-acre campus, a high-tech computer lab, a wellness center, and a library housing 10,000 books and a cozy fireplaceāopened in Henley-on-Klip, South Africa. After an admissions process that included an interview with Oprah, the school accepted 152 seventh and eighth gradersātuition-free. (Since then, the student body has more than doubled.)