14 Facts About WE Charity

WE Charity, formerly known as Free the Children, is an international development charity and youth empowerment movement founded in 1995 by human rights advocates Marc and Craig Kielburger.

We Charity is related to other ventures from the Kielburgers, including the for-profit Me to We, which was the title of a 2004 book by Craig and Marc Kielburger, and We Day, a series of large-scale motivational events held in 17 cities throughout the school year.

On 9 September 2020, We Charity announced that it was winding down its operations in Canada and selling its assets to establish an endowment that will help sustain ongoing We Charity projects around the world.

In November 2020, a Wikipedia investigation found the Wikipedia article for the WE Charity was illicitly modified by "paid agents who used deceptive online identities" from Israeli online reputation management service Percepto.

In November 2021, CBC News reported that the WE Charity misled donors about the school they built in Kenya.

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On February 8 2022, WE Charity filed a lawsuit against the CBC in the District of Columbia District Court, alleging defamation stemming from a November 2021 piece which claimed that WE Charity had misled donors who helped build schools in Kenya.

WE Charity is represented in the case by New York-based law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.

WE Charity was founded in 1995 by Craig Kielburger when he was 12 years old.

WE Charity holds an annual series of stadium-sized youth empowerment events called "WE Day", bringing together tens of thousands of students and educators as part of the yearlong WE Schools service learning program.

WE Charity is governed by separate Boards of Directors in Canada, the US and UK.

WE Charity's resigned in March 2020, at the same time as many other board members.

Some former employees and volunteers of We Charity have criticized the way they were treated at the organization.

In June 2020, Amanda Maitland, a former We Charity employee, said a speech she wrote for a We Schools tour in 2019 about her experiences as a black woman was edited without her approval by a group of mostly white staff members.

Prime Minister Trudeau defended the government's initial decision to have WE Charity administer the program, saying that the organization's networks across the country made it the right choice and WE Charity itself would not profit from the contract.