Madonna’s Charity Fails in Bid to Finance School

[The Straight Story]

Madonna’s Charity Fails in Bid to Finance School


LOS ANGELES — A high-profile charitable foundation set up to build a school for impoverished girls in Malawi, founded by the singer Madonna and fellow devotees of a prominent Jewish mysticism movement, has collapsed after spending $3.8 million on a project that never came to fruition.

The board of directors of the organization, Raising Malawi, has been ousted and replaced by a caretaker board, including Madonna and her manager, officials with the organization said Thursday. Its executive director, who is the boyfriend of Madonna’s former trainer, Tracy Anderson, left in October amid criticism of his management style and cost overruns for the school. These included what auditors described as outlandish expenditures on salaries, cars, office space and a golf course membership, free housing and a car and driver for the school’s director.

Most strikingly, the plans to build a $15 million school for about 400 girls in the poor southeastern African country of 15 million — which had drawn financial support from Hollywood and society circles, as well as the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre International, an organization devoted to Jewish mysticism — have been officially abandoned.

That prospective move set off a fierce backlash when first raised earlier this year, with Malawi officials saying they were stunned and asserting that Madonna was blaming management breakdowns because she had been unable to raise the money she had promised.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/us/25madonna.html?_r=1

[DonCoquixote]

1. I hate that the girls in Malawi may suffer

But this was just another Rich person trying to buy their way into Heaven, especially one that a lot of people hate. Better luck next life, oh "material girl" that helped carry Reagan's shield until the GOP decided that Gay bashing was cheap and easy. Go pour yourself a cocktail with your fellow faux leftist, Arianna H.

[robcon]

2. There's enough money to build several schools.

But the material girl wants a monument to her wonderfulness, not a place for Malawi girls to learn.