I talk about the rich quite often in terms of them investing their money in social issues. In a world filled with poverty, disease and violent crimes, much of the third world looks at the U.S. and thinks “how can they waste of so much that they have?” One particular area that is taken for granted in the U.S. is education. If you take a look at education standards in other countries like Singapore, China where education is of high importance in teens as they grow up and compare it to that of the U.S. there is a huge difference.
Even in poor countries in Africa, where they often grow up in poverty and literally study if they are lucky to during the day light because of no electricity, education is still of high importance. Well, Oprah recently dedicated and built a girl’s school in South Africa to a group of 73 young girls who will now have the chance of receiving a wonderful education and future. The girls will be subjected to higher standards of excellence compared to what is being taught in U.S. schools. In addition, the school will eventually host about 425 girls from grades 7-12.
Winfrey said, “One of the things that’s very important for me is for the girls to be proud of themselves and to be proud of the way they look and where they come from, and a lot of them in the beginning were very embarrassed about being poor.” Coming from a poor family myself (American standards) I too was embarrassed of being poor. It was through education that I saw a way out for myself. It is true, we in America have so many opportunities that others do not.
Most of the girls come from “true poverty” with no running water and no electricity. The opposition that Oprah was faced with when building the school was great. She said “The resistance was too much, What are you doing? What do they need all that room for? Why does a girl need all that closet space when she has no clothes? That’s what they first said to me. And my idea was to understand, yes, you come from nothing, but oh, what a something you will become, if given the opportunity,”
Touché Oprah, a round of applause for giving a dream to a group of what will become over 400 students who would have probably lived their who lives without knowing how to read and dying just as poor as they were born.
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