Oprah Winfrey: Philanthropic Traveler

The world's most successful woman has always shared her wealth. But her latest project. -The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa -is literally one for the books. The stated purpose of the academy is to educate a generation of women to help lead their country out of poverty in upcoming decades.

Oprah says she decided to build her own school because she was tired of charity from a distance. "When I first started making a lot of money," she says, "I really became frustrated with the fact that all I did was write check after check to this or that charity without really feeling like it was a part of me. At a certain point, you want to feel that connection." But there's another reason Oprah has put so much, and so much of herself, into this school. Like her students, she grew up poor -truly a coal miner's daughter -with dim hopes for the future. She was raped as a girl and ultimately raised by her grandmother. To a certain degree, she is building this school for herself: the plucky girl who became one of the most successful women in the world yet still feels that pain. I wanted to hear those things as a child. If she can save these girls, perhaps she can rescue that child, too.

Oprah calls the school "the fulfillment of my work on earth." But God is in the details. She personally chose the china and the pleated uniforms, the sheets and the beds -she actually sprawled out on each one to check for comfort. She also insisted that the dorm rooms and the closets be extra large, even though the girls have minimal amounts of clothes. "People asked me why it was important to have closet space, and it's because they will have something," she says. "We plan to give them a chance to earn money to buy things. That's the only way to really teach them how to appreciate things." There is no official motto at her academy, but it could well be dream big. For poor girls in Africa, that's not so easy. As she planned her academy, Oprah discovered that the local architects weren't interested in her version of girl power. "From the very beginning, the developers sent me plans for the school that resembled a chicken coop," she says. "It was clear that the attitude was 'These are poor African girls. Why spend all this on them?' It was unbelievably upsetting." Per-Anders Pettersson / Getty Images for Newsweek

Learn More:
The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy
MSNBC: Oprah Winfrey's Lavish South African School

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