The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls holds as its primary focus the holistic education, care and support of female students at the Academy. In the years since we opened our doors and hearts to our first class of girls, we have faced the complexities of anxiety, depression, suicidality and coping with past trauma as we’ve walked with them through their daily lives and metamorphosis into inspirational young women.

Many of our girls come from disadvantaged backgrounds and communities where social ills and abuse are prevalent. Within our student population of approximately 310 girls, (about 1 in 40 have had one or more)(each student, on average, has lived through to five to eight) Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES). South Africa has a well-know history of human rights transgressions from the Apartheid era which has resulted in a trans-generational legacy of abuse predominantly due to unprocessed trauma.

Trauma left unprocessed in any individual will hamper their opportunity for high quality of life and it changes the trajectory of a person and their generations. Hence the Neuro-sequential Model has been adopted for teaching, learning, care-giving approach and as a way of life at OWLAG.