My Kleenex Moment: Oprah's "Leadership Academy" in South Africa

[TahitiNut]

I don't care if you don't like Oprah. I don't care if you think she's self-promoting. I don't care if you sneer. Each time CNN has shown the 73 kids from the townships - mouthy kids - the kids who ask too many questions - I tear up when I see their faces. I want to wrap them in my arms and wish them the best of everything.

"It's like I am daydreaming," the Soweto primary school pupil told the Pretoria News. "They wanted someone like me who is not shy - and I talk too much!" Winfrey hugged Buhle and told the assembled audience: "When I asked her why she wanted to come to the academy, she said: 'It's my tomorrow.'"

Buhle lives with her mother and grandmother in a small house with nine other family members. Her mother, Zanele, said: "They were looking for clever children who are disadvantaged. Buhle is a different child.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1855311,00.html

Buhle ... you are everyone's 'tomorrow'! Let's do everything we can to make that 'tomorrow' as good as it can be.

[proud patriot]

1. I'm down with that

:hug:

[TahitiNut]

2. (sniff) Thanks, luv!

I literally get tears on my cheeks when I look at those kids. Their absolutely GORGEOUS faces show what can happen when the heavy steel lid is removed from "What's Possible" ... and it really gives me some hope that at least someone, somewhere, is putting a brighter star at the top of our human family tree.

[WarNoMore]

3. So beaufiful

Here's some children that won't have to live a dream deferred.

[TahitiNut]

6. Their lives will hopefully have wonderful ripples in our human pond.

The mere fact of such an academy's existence has to yield ripples in the townships - dreams that can't be gotten in a bottle. These kids have courage (heart!) that most of us could only dream of. It's really important the the best be used as human seed corn ... priming the pump.

[tabatha]

4. south africa

Apartheid was brought down in part by sanctions. The people who suffered the most were the blacks - but they said they did not mind, as long as the regime could be changed. After Apartheid ended, the same companies that applied sanctions and many others were very hesitant to invest in South Africa and help those who had been affected most throughout the history of that country after the whites arrived. I think they said they wanted to see if it was a stable country under the ANC.

For 5-10 years after Mandela took power, I used to pray that Gates or any of the millionaire/billionaires in the world would help that country. And thus when I see Oprah, Melinda and Bill helping, I think back of all those who struggled to overcome the old regime - that their lives were not wasted, and that their dreams may one day come true. And I guess I choke up.

It is particularly poignant, because many of the very whites who had supported the old government and resented criticism of it, were very fast to criticize Mandela and the ANC for not reversing wrongs that had been 100+ years in the making - in just a few short years - and from a country that was not at its peak but had almost been brought down to its knees economically by sanctions to remove the Apartheid govt.

It is still very much a white-privilege country - and Oprah is helping reverse the remnants of Apartheid in practical, real terms.

[elocs]

5. I remember the Oprah episode where her foundation with money collected

by a young girl who was killed in an accident helped to redecorate some run down sleeping rooms for the girls and boys at a South Africa school. When the young teen aged girls were let in to see the change they were all excited and squealing and jumping up and down. Suddenly one girl stopped and began to quietly weep because it was so overwhelming that somebody would do this for them because they had so little and it seemed as if nobody cared. Then all the girls were crying. It was so intensely emotional that all I need to do to cry is to think of that incident. I am now.