WE Charity controversy prompts examination of group’s overseas footprint
- The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition)
- September 28, 2020
- JACOB SEREBRIN
The controversy around WE Charity in Canada is opening the door to a public discussion about whether WE – and groups like it – actually help the African communities where they operate.
Firoze Manji, the former Africa program director for Amnesty International, said one of the big problems with groups such as WE is that they aren’t accountable to the people they claim to serve.
“They are accountable to selfappointed boards,” said Mr. Manji, who is originally from Kenya and is now a professor at Carleton University’s Institute of African Studies. “The mythology is that they are going to fight poverty. The problem with that proposition, although it sounds very good, is that they don’t deal with the causes of impoverishment.”
On Sept. 9, WE Charity said it would wind down its Canadian operations, but its for-profit affiliate, ME to WE, will remain active, as will WE Charity in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The charity’s programs in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Ecuador will continue “as long as possible” the organization said. The extent and impact of those overseas programs is not easy to discern. It is clear from financial statements released by the organization and tax filings that WE’s soon-to-be-closed Canadian programs are by far the charity’s largest. In 2019, WE Charity Canada had total revenue of $65.9-million and expenses of just under $68.2-million.
In some years, its U.S. arm has sent more money to Canada than it sent to any country in Asia, Africa or Latin America or spent on domestic programming. In the 2019 financial year, U.S. tax filings show WE Charity U.S. spent US$7.6-million on domestic programs and US$18.8-million on “grants and other assistance to foreign organizations” – of which US$10.8-million went to WE Charity Canada. In 2018, WE Charity U.S. spent US$5.8-million on domestic programming with another US$6-million going to Canada. That year US$8.5-million went to Asia, Africa and Latin America.
WE Charity said the money was sent to the Canadian office to reimburse it for work done on programs that were delivered in the United States. Staff in the organization’s Global Learning Centre in Toronto “create learning curricula, organize and deliver digital programming, carry out program development, and conduct measurement and evaluation work for operations in both Canada and the U.S.,” WE said in an e-mail response to Canadian Press.
Outside of North America, Kenya was the biggest recipient of money from WE Charity U.S.
WE did not make a representative available for an interview, but in an e-mailed response it included a quote attributed to the governor of Kenya’s Narok County. “I can confidently say that no NGO has done more to benefit Kenya than WE Charity,” Samuel K. Tunai is quoted as saying.
Other Kenyans have a different impression. Karuti Kanyinga, director of the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, said he isn’t familiar with WE Charity or Free the Children, the organization’s former name.
With more than 10,000 NGOs operating in Kenya, he said it’s “difficult to keep track of what any of them is doing, except if it is involved in huge advocacy work or is one of the big ones with a lot of resources to impact change at the national level.”
WE Charity doesn’t appear on a list of the 50 NGOs that spend the most on programs in Kenya, released in the 2018-19 annual report of Kenya’s Non-Governmental Organizations Co-ordination Board. All NGOs operating in Kenya are required to submit reports to the board.
This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
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