Raising Malawi, the charity co-founded by Madonna, has announced it will begin construction, in collaboration with non-governmental organization buildOn, on 10 schools in the impoverished African nation of Malawi. The schools will not be managed by Madonna's charity, however, and will be run by the individual communities they serve.

"This remains a very big priority in my life and I am excited that with the help of buildOn we can maintain our ongoing commitment to move forward efficiently," Madonna said in a statement provided to The Associated Press (via Billboard).

Despite its good intentions, Raising Malawi has faced a variety of problems in the last several years. An audit by the Global Philanthropy Group in 2010 led to questions over salaries and benefits of officials running the organization, leading to the charity's executive director's resignation in October of that year. In January 2011, it was announced that Raising Malawi's flagship project, an all-girls school built and managed by the organization, was being abandoned. Two months later, the board of directors was removed and the charity was sued by former employees of the planned school for wrongful termination. The move to team with buildOn and leave control of the schools to the communities they serve appears to be the charity's first step in reorganizing and pushing through the turmoil to continue work toward the organization's mission to serve the nearly one million orphans in Malawi.

The newly announced plan calls for simple, more practical schools that will better serve their communities, according to Trevor Neilson, who is helping to direct the project alongside Global Philanthropy Group. In her statement, Madonna said the new approach will allow the program to serve twice as many children as before.

"For schools to be successful, they need to have community ownership and leadership," Neilson said. "Raising Malawi shouldn't be running schools in Malawi. Local communities in Malawi should be running those schools, so that's a big part of the shift."

BuildOn has been working in Malawi, which like many other countries in southern Africa has been devastated by the AIDS epidemic and subsequent widespread orphaning, for over 20 years and has built more than 50 schools in the country.

Neilson had nothing but positive things to say about Madonna's decision to stick by her plans to build schools for Malawi's children despite the setbacks faced by her organization. "When the previous management team had those problems, I think a lot of people thought Madonna would give up," Neilson said. "It would have been understandable, but instead she's going to reaching twice as many kids."

show||video|728690|