Madonna's Raising Malawi Charity Cuts Ties To Kabbalah Centre

Madonna’s plans to build a school for girls in Malawi have been abandoned, after major problems emerged in the handling of finances for the charity organization ‘Raising Malawi’. We have contributed to the project and covered it from the beginning.

There are no charges that Madonna engaged in any improper activities and despite what some have claimed in the controversial project, the NY Times reports that besides lending her name and reputation to the project, Madonna donated $11 million of her own money to the organization that she founded with Michael Berg, a co-director of the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles.

Madonna attended two ceremonies at what would have been the site of the school in Lilongwe and she has adopted two children from Malawi.

From my studying of the issues around Raising Malawi, I felt that critics were going after Madonna personally and also her association with Jewish mysticism, which riles more than a few highly religious Jews and also staunch Conservatives.

I personally contacted Philippe van den Bossche, who has worked for Madonna since 2004 and was the executive director of Raising Malawi from 2005 until October 2010, asking when Raising Malawi would be filing tax returns and received no answer to my questions.

In November 2010 Madonna engaged Trevor Neilson, a founder of the Global Philanthropy Group, to dissect problems at Raising Malawi, reports .

“Despite $3.8 million having been spent by the previous management team, 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 said. “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.”

A written report by the Global Philanthropy Group, a copy of which was provided Thursday by the Kabbalah Centre, was critical of two former officials of the organization: Philippe van den Bossche, who has worked for Madonna since 2004 and was the executive director of Raising Malawi from 2005 until October, and Anjimile Oponyo, who worked at the United Nations Development Program when she was chosen last year to head the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls.

Philippe Van Den Bossche is the boyfriend of Madonna’s former trainer Tracy Anderson. In a bit of confusion, it was widely reported that Philippe van den Bossche resigned from his work with Madonna in September 2009, when he moved to New York to be with Anderson. I can’t explain this discrepancy around the dates of the executive director’s involvement in Raising Malawi, after an extensive Google search.

The Global Philanthropy Group, which is actively involved with the Clinton Global Initiative and also the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is running Raising Malawi. Not mentioned in the NY Times article is the fact that the Kabbalah Centre, once part of the project, is no longer involved.

In admitting the problems and shortcomings of Raising Malawi, Madonna issued a statement that she will continue to work on education in Malawi, maintaining her focus on the fact that sexty-seven percent of girls don’t go to secondary school. ~ Anne