AT2W

Oprah's School for Girls 1st Graduating Class

Oprah’s School for Girls Celebrate 1st Class Graduates as High Achievers

Read report below from News One and read our take at the bottom.

HENLEY-ON-KLIP, South Africa — Mpumi Nobiva was raised by her grandmother in a neighborhood beset by poverty and crime after her mother died of AIDS. Now one of the first to graduate from Oprah Winfrey’s school, she is headed to college in North Carolina.

Winfrey spent $40 million to give her girls a campus with computer and science labs, a library and a wellness center. None paid tuition. The students are high-achievers, often from communities where schools are struggling to overcome the legacy of apartheid.

And as the South African school year nears its end, all 72 members of the school’s first graduating class have been accepted to universities in South Africa or the United States. More than a dozen have received full scholarships.

Winfrey told her students that when you teach a girl, you teach a nation.

“The first class, my class, will prove that,” said Nobiva, 18, who will study visual and performing arts at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Winfrey will be at the school for graduation ceremonies in January, school officials said Wednesday as students gathered to reflect on their experiences over the last five years.

AT2W’s Take: It must be made clear that- all anyone wants is for students, especially those who are not afforded the opportunity for decent education, to be able to succeed in doing so. We reported last year that Oprah Winfrey’s school had been riddled with such scandals like staff members committing same sex child sex abuse and a student found dead near the campus. We contacted the school and they stated they would look into it and that they had no affiliation with the incident. With this being true, we wondered if the future of her school for girls would survive such scrutiny. If the girls are finally in a safe place to learn and not be ‘tampered’ with, we wish them all the best and Oprah’s efforts in doing so.