A charity launched by Madonna is floundering after nearly $4 million was spent, with little to show for it, on plans to build a school in the impoverished African nation of Malawi.
Madonna has made regular visits to the country for her Raising Malawi foundation, to which she gave $11 million; she also adopted her youngest children David and Mercy in Malawi.
But now, the pop star's dream of building a $15 million school to educate approximately 400 girls has officially collapsed, according to the New York Times.
"A thoughtful decision has been made to discontinue plans for the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, as it was originally conceived," Michael Berg said Thursday in an email to donors who supported the project. Berg is co-director of Los Angeles' Kabbalah Centre, and co-founder of Raising Malawi.
The foundation's board of directors has been replaced by Madonna and her manager, who join a newly formed "caretaker board."
Concerns of financial mismanagement arose in recent months. Cars, golf memberships, and a chauffeur for the school's director were described by auditors as "outlandish" wastes of money. The charity's former executive director, Tracy Anderson (boyfriend of Madonna's personal trainer), left Raising Malawi in October amid criticism of his management.
In a statement Thursday, Madonna said: "There's a real education crisis in Malawi....67 percent of girls don't go to secondary school, and this is simply unacceptable. Our team is going to work hard to address this in every way we can." In acknowledgment of her charity's failings, she said, "I'm frustrated that our education work has not moved forward in a faster way."
Government authorities in Malawi already displaced hundreds of locals from Chinkhota village, near the capitol city of Lilongwe, to accommodate construction of the school. Madonna's camp has yet to explain why she failed to act earlier on the crisis within her organization, which has raised $18 million so far. The Times was told Madonna was directing a movie about British royals, and therefore unavailable for an interview about the latest Raising Malawi news.
Meanwhile, the charity insists that Raising Malawi will not disband, but will redirect how it uses funds to help the poor in Malawi.
The Global Philanthropy Group says it advised Madonna months ago that millions were being ineffectively spent by her charity, and suggested she finance existing education programs instead of trying to launch a new school.
Trevor Neilson of the Global Philanthropy Group studied Raising Malawi's mistakes and told the Times, "Despite $3.8 million having been spent....the project has not broken ground, there was no title to the land and there was, over all, a startling lack of accountability on the part of the management team in Malawi and the management team in the United States." He added, "We have yet to determine exactly what happened to all of that $3.8 million. We have not accounted for all the funds that were used."
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