Oprah Winfrey: A Friend to the World

Written by Alexis Lion.

Any writer that attempts to describe the work that Oprah Winfrey has done, the number of awards she has won, or the numerous honours dedicated to her faces a monumental task. It is nigh impossible to fully reflect her character and the heart that she has. This lady is the talk of the town. She has a television network, a talk show and a private charity foundation titled after her. More than Oprah’s accomplishments, what struck many around the world is how she brings hope, joy and vision to the lives she has touched.

Oprah Winfrey lived her childhood in dire poverty. Her hometown was Kosciusko, Mississippi, and she was raised on a farm by her grandmother. Due to much negligence, and physical and mental abuse by her biological mother, she ran away at 13 years of age, and was sent by the juvenile detention centre to live with her disciplinarian father. Oprah did not let her circumstances hinder her from empowering herself and others like her, “I remember thinking, my life won’t be like this, it will be better. And it wasn’t from a place of arrogance, it was just a place of knowing that things could be different for me somehow.”

Oprah has won countless awards, including the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and American Black Film Festival awards, just to name a few. She was also given the Jefferson Awards for Public Service (the “Nobel Prize for community and public service” in USA) in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian award bestowed by the President of USA) in 2013. She was also honoured with the Humanitarian Award by the Elis Wiesel Foundation for Humanity in 2007.

Amidst all her achievements, one of the most meaningful ones is by then-President Bill Clinton who signed the National Child Protection Act, informally known as “The Oprah Bill” in 1993. In an interview after the signing ceremony, she revealed in heartfelt words, “A part of my mission in life now is to encourage every other child who has been abused to tell. You tell, and if they don't believe you, you keep telling. You tell everybody until somebody listens to you…I don't want another child to be afraid of saying, ‘This is what happened to me’.”

Also, in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Oprah launched the ChristmasKindness program in 2002, to provide gifts, joy and hope to over 50, 000 children in the rural regions of South Africa. During that Christmas, she had an epiphany, “I realized in those moments why I was born, why I am not married and do not have children of my own. These are my children. I made a decision to be a voice for those children, to empower them, to help educate them, so the spirit that burns alive inside each of them does not die."

To those that know her, she is not Oprah Winfrey the actress or talk show host or philanthropist. She is the real deal. She is a woman that lives genuinely by her convictions, and draws people from all walks of life with her humility and empathy.