WE Charity US
Insulated from Canadian politics, WE Charity US continued to create positive social impact in the United States.
WE Charity has operated in the United States since 1997. Throughout that time, it has worked with students across America to promote engagement with charitable causes while also soliciting donations for WE Charity’s overseas development work.
Although Canadian politics had a significant effect on WE Charity’s ability to continue in Canada, American donors and partners were generally not impacted by the politics in Canada. In the fall of 2020, WE Charity commissioned a market survey that confirmed the US market’s impressions of WE Charity remained positive and unaffected by the news concerning Mr. Trudeau and the charity.
Through the “WE Schools” program, WE Charity delivers year-long social action and leadership tools and opportunities to students across America. The program provides participants with free curriculum and classroom resources to support volunteerism, youth mental health, trauma-informed learning and positive character education.
In the 2019-2020 school year, more than seven thousand schools in the United States had WE Schools groups and WE Schools engaged more than 24,000 educators. More than 1.7 million students in the US benefitted from WE Schools, with almost 280,000 students participating directly in WE Schools groups, and another 1.42 million students being impacted by that programming. Also in the same year, eighty-four percent of WE Schools groups in the US volunteered, contributing more than 3.5 million volunteering hours. That same year, the activities across WE Schools groups in the United States achieved an estimated total social impact value of more than $90 million.
WE Charity also partners with the College Board to provide the “AP with WE Service” program, which combines college-level learning from the Advanced Placement Program with WE Charity's service-learning model to create an opportunity for AP students to apply their classroom work to the real world. WE Charity is the only organization approved in the US to certify service learning on high school transcripts. Educators from all of the schools in the US that use Advanced Placement are able to provide this program.
CBC falsely reported that WE Charity deceived its donors.
More than a year after WE Charity announced its closure in Canada, the CBC published a barrage of stories on TV, radio, podcast and internet, falsely accusing WE Charity of deceiving its donors about their donations to support education in Kenya. CBC was not merely wrong—it knew it was wrong when it published its stories.
CBC clearly had WE Charity in the US in its crosshairs when it published its false coverage. The coverage was shot in multiple locations in the U.S. and centred around a donor in North Carolina. WE Charity has sued CBC for defamation in federal court in Washington, D.C., where the charity faces the hardest legal standard in the world to prove its case. See for yourself why WE Charity believes it should win.