MacDella was named 2015 Philanthropist of the Year at The Young, Gifted, and Black (YGB) Entrepreneurial Awards. Born in Monrovia, Liberia in the late 1970s, She was one of the thousands of refugees who fled Liberia after the eruption of a civil war in 1990. At the age of 16, Ms. Cooper and her two older brothers landed in the embattled streets of Newark, New Jersey where Cooper attended Barringer High School. Graduating 3rd in a class of 1,200 students, Ms. Cooper received a full academic scholarship to The College of New Jersey, despite her rough past and hard road.
MacDella is known today for starting the MacDella Cooper Foundation, a non-for-profit charity that provides educational opportunities and basic necessities for abandoned children in Liberia. In 2010, Cooper opened the MCF Academy, a boarding school for orphans in Liberia. The MCF Academy is the first tuition-free boarding school that houses up to 200 students. The Academy provides a better quality of living in an environment that is safe, secure and conductive for learning. Ms. Cooper hopes the Academy will raise future leaders who take pride in their nation and themselves. MacDella has been called “Liberia’s Angel” and “Africa’s Angel.”
Visit her at: http://www.macdellacooper.org/ and http://www.macdellacooper.com/
