donor transparency

WE Charity offers a remarkable level of donor transparency, including unqualified audits since its founding, independent reviews of its development programs by groups such as Mission Measurement, and welcoming tens of thousands of donors overseas to inspect the development programs.

Through the collective effort of WE Charity donors,  the following global impacts have been achieved:

Overview of WE Charity’s development model

WE Charity’s global work empowers rural villages to uplift themselves from extreme poverty. Its development model is as follows: over 5-7 years per village, WE Charity works in partnership with the community to implement a 5-pillar development model focused on education, water and sanitation, healthcare, food security, and alternative income programs.

While some charities focus on a single intervention (i.e. building a school or borehole), WE Charity provides dozens of interventions to help villages. Those interventions include both physical infrastructure (drip irrigation systems, mobile medical clinics for student care, etc.) and community capacity building (teacher training, village saving and loan systems, etc.). Both are essential. For example, a schoolhouse without a properly trained teacher is not effective.

To learn more about our WE Villages development model, watch the videos below.

Carol Moraa, Head of WE Villages

How WE Villages Works

To learn about about what the loss of WE Charity will mean in Kenya, watch these videos.

VOICES FROM KENYA

Carol Moraa talks about the impact in Kenya

VOICES FROM KENYA

Documentary: What We Lost

From our Supporters

DONOR, MOUNT FORREST, ONTARIO

Donna McFarlane

I am a longtime volunteer and supporter of WE Charity. My support has not waivered and continues to this day.

I want to reassure all of you who have donated time, talents or money to Free the Children/WE Charity, that your resources have all been wisely used. Many of us from our community of Mount Forrest have travelled to Kenya and India. We have seen the water, education and health projects. Support of these projects freed girls from early marriage, women from unnecessary death in childbirth and eradicated the cholera that stole young children from their families.

The organization does what is best for the community. On our trips, we learned about the “WE Villages” model which provides for opportunity for people to lift themselves out of poverty. It helps to provide education, health care, water, economic opportunity and food security. When you put all those aspects together in international development, communities can thrive.

We also understand how the donor model works. The organization has been very clear over the years. It is not about the physical schoolhouse, it is about education. It is not about the actual goat, it is about economic opportunity for women. The programs are as important as the physical infrastructure. As donors, we understand we are contributing to everything the village needs. There is no confusion. And we are grateful that we can contribute to the communities, working alongside an organization which creates real change. It is not about us, it is about the communities.

Some Canadians, including those in politics and in the media, have very little experience in international development. They have recently interfered with the people and the projects in Kenya, causing them considerable harm. The most important people in this story are those people we are trying to help in Kenya. If we want to maintain the support that we are giving to those families, not only in Kenya, but in all the other countries where WE Charity has been working, we have to put aside our own egos and special interests.

Sometimes people lose perspective on how fortunate we are to able to improve the lives of others. To give back. To serve a purpose. To know we have made a difference. That is the gift that everyone in Kenya gives to us.

WE Charity’s messages have been clear: Change others’ lives in a positive way. Demonstrate social responsibility and compassion for others. This mission is more important than ever today.

YOUTH AMBASSADORS

Emma & Ashleigh Dzis

Our names are Emma and Ashleigh Dzis and we are two youth ambassadors of WE. We became involved with WE because unlike any other organization, WE empowers youth by giving them the tools and knowledge to create long-term impacts locally and globally.

As leaders of our own We Group, over the years, we've been involved in fundraising for various initiatives such as We Walk for Water and Give a Goat.

For us, it has always been about what the issue is, how we can help and what impact is being made.

When hosting our “Give a Goat” parties, it wasn't about what part of the process our donation was going to but rather what impact as a whole was being made to provide opportunity through our donations to supporting the women in the communities.

With regards to their campaigns, WE has always been clear about the fact that their goal has not been to “give someone a fish but rather to teach someone to fish” and ensure their projects are long-lasting and sustainable. In order to do so, you need to educate the communities and provide tools to enable them to maintain these projects independently.

Think of each project as a puzzle. You can't just have a border. You need all the pieces to make it complete. In the same way, you can't just give people the materials to make a well. You also need to train people to build them and educate members of the community on how to maintain them.

In our experience, we have always felt confident donating to and supporting WE knowing that our donation is contributing to a long-lasting impact and not just a one-off donation. Through the five pillars of impact that WE models, we've developed an understanding of how all the pillars are connected and everything that goes into making a project successful. It is essential to consider all the different factors that together, will create the end result.

CALDWELL INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT

Brendan Caldwell, President, CEO

Personally and through our Foundation, I have donated to WE Charity since it was Free the Children back in 2007. Having seen for myself both in India and Kenya how WE Charity meaningfully helps children and their families, I have been grateful that our donations are used to transform communities through education -- and all of the infrastructure required in a village to make education possible. My family and I believe strongly in WE's model and in the WE team who have done such wonderful work for so many years.

READ OUR DONOR STATEMENT HERE.

More information you might find helpful

Donors Matching
Ending poverty is complex. In many large international charities, when a donor seeks to “sponsor a child”, “buy a goat”, or “fund a schoolroom”, the donor funds are not literally assigned to one child, one goat, or one schoolhouse. Those funds are often pooled to achieve the ultimate social impact of helping people. The websites of most international organizations clearly explain that such donation items are often symbolic representations of what a donor will support. WE Charity follows this same practice. When donors support programs such as a farm animal or a schoolhouse, those funds are often pooled to help villages. For example, when a donor sponsors a specific item (e.g. buying a goat), they are matched to the associated “pillar” (e.g. alternative income programs) in a village. Multiple donors may be assigned to the pillar in the village until all costs for that pillar are fully funded. WE Charity seeks to clearly communicate with donors that, in most cases, their contribution is being pooled with other donors supporting a pillar in the village. WE Charity has heard from countless donor who are clear on this practice, but we recognize that international development is complex and WE Charity has continuously sought to improve its communications system with donors over the years. WE Charity has sought to communicate this development model via its website and other materials for well-over a decade, including, for example, below: WE CHARITY'S COMMITMENT: If you are donating to our WE Villages program, we will allocate your donation to achieve the greatest possible impact. Our international Gift of Impact items are symbolic of projects and programming within one of our five Pillars of Impact: Education, Water, Health, Food and Opportunity. Your purchase of a donation catalogue item within one of our five Pillars of Impact will be used to supply the selected item where locally appropriate, or funds will be used to support an associated project or program within that Pillar, ensuring a sustainable and holistic impact that takes into consideration the specific needs of the communities we work with. WE Charity is constantly assessing needs and reserves the right to re-allocate the funds to the organizational greatest need. For more information on your impact, please [visit our FAQ page](/wecharity/en-CA/about-us/governance/financial-faq).
Schoolhouses
WE Charity provides a comprehensive development model enabling education. WE Charity’s model includes both building schoolhouses and funding associated education programs for 5-7 years essential to ensure that children succeed in their education, such as training teachers, building teacher accommodations, educational materials, establishing school farms for student lunches, and more. When a donor supports a schoolhouse, s/he is helping to support education programs in that village, which could include, for example, the construction costs of a schoolhouse or the associated education costs for the schoolhouse to successful benefit children in the village. This allocation is part of WE Charity’s 5-pillar development and helps ensure donor funds are aligned with both the donors’ intentions and each village’s needs.
Reed Cowan and Donor Plaques
We appreciate Reed Cowan bringing to us important information. Mr. Cowan and his organization directly raised, based on available records, $70,046 USD for WE Charity. He supported four schoolhouses in Kenya. Two of the schoolhouses had plaques commemorating his son. One of the plaques mounted in 2007 was very unfortunately removed. When WE Charity learned of this error, the second plaque was swiftly mounted. WE Charity co-founder Craig Kielburger and a member of the US Board of Directors each spoke with Mr. Cowan to profoundly apologize for this error with the plaque. All schoolhouses in Kenya continue to operate. WE Charity appreciates that he has highlighted a concern with events that occurred in the village of Eneleria in Kenya, and we now know that at least one other donor to this village during this timeframe has raised concerns about not receiving proper plaque recognition. The events Mr. Cowan has reported took place nearly 15 years ago. We are in the process of reviewing all of our records, to the extent that we have them from that time period, in order to properly and respectfully address these concerns. WE Charity is also grateful to Mr. Cowan for inspiring others to fundraise for WE Charity, including Broward School District raising $93,500 USD for WE Charity and the Shining World Compassion donating $10,000 USD. WE Charity supported additional development programs with those donations, and hundreds of children have directly benefitted from those generous contributions. For our current generous donors, please note that it was not standard practice for WE Charity to place plaques on community projects, such as schoolhouses. A select number of schoolhouses received plaques on a case-by-case basis. This practice has been phased-out over time, because the local community expressed their preference to not have plaques on projects such as schoolhouses that they owned and maintained.

Some important links

Below are links to pages and reports that we hope will be helpful in answering any further questions you might have.

Letter from Robin Wiszowaty, Head, WE East Africa, on what she's learned about international development and our work

Donor Transparency