London: Madonna has revealed that she plans to build 10 new schools in Malawi with a new partner, after she was forced to abandon her first project there last year.
The 53-year-old singer, who has adopted two children from the southern African nation, said that she hoped the new schools would educate at least 1,000 children a year, half of them girls.
The academy she previously planned to build, which would have only catered for half this number of students, was scrapped because of mismanagement and spiralling costs.
This time the pop star’s Raising Malawi charity is teaming up with the non-profit group buildOn, which has constructed 54 primary schools in Malawi in the last 19 years.
“I am excited that with the help of buildOn, we can maintain our ongoing commitment to move forward efficiently,” Sky News quoted the Material Girl as saying.
“We now will be able to serve twice as many children as we would have served with our old approach.
“I have learned a great deal over the last few years and feel confident that we can reach our goals to educate children in Malawi, especially young girls, in a much more practical way.
“Constructing smaller schools in partnership with buildOn has restored my faith that we can accomplish what we promised we would,” she added. (PTI)
Madonna’s earlier plan to build a state of the art girls school for about 400 girls just outside the Malawi capital Lilongwe collapsed last year, and the board of Raising Malawi was fired.
According to the New York Times, 2.4 million pounds had been spent on the school with little to show for it.
The singer has lent 7 million pounds to the organisation which she co-founded in 2006.
Malawi has more than half a million children orphaned by the Aids epidemic and is ranked by the United Nations as one of the world’s 20 least developed countries. (ANI)