In 1995, 12-year-old Craig Kielburger read the story of Iqbal Masih, a child laborer of the same age who escaped slavery and was murdered for advocating for children’s rights. Inspired to take action, Craig rallied his classmates and his brother, Marc, to join his cause. Iqbal’s story showed Craig and Marc that people as young as them could drive significant change in the world around them.

They channelled this inspiration into creating WE Charity, a unique movement that sought to give young people a voice and a platform to become agents of global change.

WE Charity established innovative programs designed to inspire generations of youth to take action for causes that resonated with them, leading many to volunteer for the first time in their lives. Through WE Schools and WE Day, the organization helped students turn the tide on declining civic engagement by inspiring the next generation to support more than 5,000 causes and log 70 million hours of volunteer service. When Craig and Marc started in 1995, youth were the least likely demographic to volunteer. Today, they are among the most likely to give their time.

Non-profit data experts at Mission Measurement conducted an alumni study of WE Schools and WE Day participants and found that participant youth experienced long-term behavioral change. Notably, 83 percent of alumni reported their volunteer service had continued, while 80 percent reported continued donations to charity.

Over the years, WE Schools delivered service-learning programs to 18,000 schools in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, empowering youth to help more than 5,000 causes.

Internationally, what began as a fight against child labor grew into a global movement that works in partnership to empower communities with the tools to free themselves from poverty. The pillars of our international development model, WE Villages, were engineered over 25 years to work in five key areas—education, water, health, food and opportunity—that together create transformative and lasting impact. WE has built 1,500 schools and schoolhouses around the world, educating 200,000 children; partnered with 30,000 women in its alternative income programs; and helped one million people gain improved access to health care and clean water.

We achieved these impacts in a climate of declining support for charities in Canada. It is a decline that began 30 years ago and reached an unprecedented low in 2019 (see here and here).

This reality forced us to be innovative. In 2009, we launched ME to WE Social Enterprise to provide economic opportunity in WE Villages partner communities, as well as a sustainable source of funding for WE Charity. Since its founding, ME to WE Social Enterprise has created 1,500 jobs for women entrepreneurs and contributed tens of millions of dollars to support WE Charity’s mission.

Over the years, 100 percent of ME to WE’s annual net profits have been donated to WE Charity or re-invested to grow the social enterprise. In all, ME to WE Social Enterprise has donated more than $20 million in cash and cost-offsetting in-kind services to WE Charity (read more).

The innovate social enterprise created empowering jobs in underserved rural regions around the world through the sale of artisans products, culturally immersive travel and Fairtrade certified coffee and chocolate to help families lift themselves out of poverty.

We are proud of what we achieved. Today, girls in rural Kenya can attend school from first grade all the way through college in the facilities we helped build. Mothers can safely deliver at WE Charity’s Baraka Hospital in Narok County, Kenya. Famers in Ecuador’s Amazon can learn valuable, sustainable skills at the WE Agricultural Learning Center. Around the world, millions of youth were inspired to volunteer because of our domestic programs.

The lasting emotion we will take away from the last 25 years is gratitude. We are grateful to the 2,500 staff members who created a world-changing organization, including the local staff hired to lead WE Villages projects and create lasting change in their own communities. We are grateful to our many skilled Board members who provided leadership, sound oversight and advice. We are grateful to our donors and partners who enabled these free programs for youth. We are grateful to the educators and students who brought alive the curriculum about causes and service campaigns. And of course, we are most grateful to all of you who supported our dream of making doing good, doable, for 25 years.

Thank you.