MADONNA‘s school for impoverished girls in Malawi has collapsed.
The school for impoverished girls in Malawi founded by the singer Madonna and fellow Kaballah devotees , a Jewish mysticism sect, has collapsed after spending $3.8 million on a project that never was to be.
After the failure to launch, the board of directors of Raising Malawi has been ousted and a new board including Madonna and her manager, officials said.
The foundation’s former executive director, Tracy Anderson, left the project in October 20101 amid criticism of not only his management abilities but skyrocketing cost overruns for the school.
The overruns included what auditors alleged were outlandish expenditures on salaries, cars, office space and a golf course membership, free housing and a car and driver for the school’s director.
But now after Madonna enlisted drawn financial support from Hollywood and society circles, as well as the LA based Kabbalah Centre International, the proposed school project has been officially torpedoed.
"A thoughtful decision has been made to discontinue plans for the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls, as it was originally conceived," Michael Berg, a co-director of the Kabbalah Centre and co-founder of Raising Malawi, said in an e-mail to the contributors.
Listing the failings of her charity, then Madonna issued a statement saying she was still intent on using the organization, which raised $18 million to date, to foster change in the poverty-stricken country.
According to The New York Times, Madonna and her aides offered no explanation of as to why she had not noticed the escalating problems as they developed.
