Front Burner - WE Charity misled donors about building schools in Kenya

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Marc and Craig Kielburger's WE Charity routinely misled school-aged children and wealthy philanthropists across North America for years as it solicited millions for schoolhouses in Kenya in its Adopt-A-Village program, an investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has found. WE denies it has misled donors. Today, Mark Kelley explains what the team found over the course of the investigation, and the obstacles they faced while reporting the story.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Angela Starrett. After WE Charity announced it was winding down operations in Canada last year, saying it wanted to focus its efforts on projects in places like Kenya,

you may remember a former donor who testified before a parliamentary committee about money he'd helped raise for WE in the name of his dead son. I'm here today to speak for and on behalf of this little guy right here. This is Wesley Cowan. He was upset. Wesley's name, Wesley's face, Wesley's life of four years and his legacy were used to make money for Free the Children and We Charities. He said he'd helped raise $160,000 to build a schoolhouse in Kenya, a school that would be adorned with a plaque honoring Wesley. But Cowan says he later learned that plaque, it was swapped out, replaced by another plaque for another donor who'd funded

that very same school. We Charities founders, Craig and Mark Kielberger, testified before the same committee that this was all a terrible mix-up, that it shouldn't have happened. Mr. Cowan is right to be upset and no words are sufficient to erase the grief that this error has compounded. And despite persistent questioning from MPs, the Kielburgers stressed they were proud of their track record of building schools. Because what was accomplished by educators and students in 7,000 schools is remarkable and deserves to be protected. is remarkable and deserves to be protected. It's been 25 years of helping to build over 1,500 schools and schoolhouses around the world, educating 200,000 children.

MPs wanted to know more about those 1,500 schools worldwide. They asked where they were located. Nearly a month later, We Charity responded, saying it had built 360 primary schoolhouses in Kenya alone. But the team at the Fifth Estate, they decided they wanted to dig into that a bit further and found the numbers just don't add up. Today, Mark Kelly joins me to talk about what he found over the course of his months-long investigation. Hi, Mark. Hi, Mark. Hi, Angela.

So when you started digging into that 360 number, what were you trying to figure out? Well, in short, we were trying to find out whether it was real. You know, we heard Reid Cowan. We had read an article that was published in Bloomberg about a year ago about another donor who said that they had fully funded a schoolhouse and then they had learned that someone else had funded that very same schoolhouse so you know at a certain point

you start to wonder is this part of a pattern there there were donors like going back to school age kids who were involved in these adoptopt-A-Village program, where you look, it was called Brick by Brick. Every time one of you makes a donation, I'll put your name on a brick. Once I've reached my goal of raising $10,000, I will send all the money to free the children. And kids would get a $20 donation or a $50 donation, which would buy a brick.

And then you put all these bricks on a piece of paper and a certain amount of bricks would amount to a school. So, you know, even these kids at a young age who were going out and doing bake sales and car washes and whatever it was, they were giving their money believing that they were paying for a schoolhouse in Kenya. And went from schools, churches, community groups, but also huge corporate partners like the Royal Bank of Canada wouldn't get involved in these, Virgin Atlantic that wouldn't get involved in these. So we wanted to know what was out there. We wanted to put that number 360 to the test. And we spent months doing this, scouring the internet for anyone who had publicly said

that they had fully funded a primary schoolhouse in Kenya. So this could be social media posts. These could be websites that church groups had put up. So we get all that publicly available information and we gathered it. We created a spreadsheet for the 30 villages that We Charity is involved with in Kenya. And we started plotting in these schoolhouses that people said they had funded for village after village after village. As you compiled all this publicly available information, what did you find? this publicly available information, what did you find? Well, when we looked at that number, you started that number, 360. That's the number that We Charity had given Parliament when they were asked,

how many schoolhouses had you built around the world? They said 360 in Kenya. It became clear to us that donors believed that they had fully funded more than 900 primary schoolhouses in Kenya. And remember, that doesn't account for donations that weren't made public. We were just going with publicly available information. We had asked We Charity to provide us with more information, and they said that was privileged information from donors. So we were just working with what we could. So that's one caveat. Another thing that we found was interesting along the way, that you would see pictures on websites, donors' websites that say, here's the schoolhouse in the village of, say, Pembiniat that our group has funded.

But then we'd look on a different donor's website and say, here's the schoolhouse we funded in Pembiniat. And then you compare the two pictures and lo and behold, they're the same picture. So clearly, we were wondering, was there a pattern here at play? And with the more evidence we found, the more it appeared that yes, indeed, that was the case. And I want to get into the nitty gritty of your investigation. But before we do that, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about this idea of fully funding a school. You spoke to some donors and fundraisers, and what did they tell you about why they did it and what it meant to them? Angela, and I think this is a really important point,

okay? Because this isn't a bunch of people who are throwing money in a pot and say, here you go, you know, go do some good with $10,000. Okay. Because this is an important distinction. And when we get down to what we charity has to say, this is why this matters. There's a guy we met, Rukshan De Silva. So he was a high school kid in Ophil, Ontario, just outside of Toronto. And he was part of a fundraising project in his class, in his grad class that had started three years earlier. So they had spent years at Iroquois Ridge High School raising money to build a schoolhouse. It was a really special project. It was something that every student and teacher and, you know, their families knew about. This is what they wanted to do. The school community got together, the community in Oakville got together to help fund this project. And they exceeded their

goal. And they were thrilled when they did that so that they could fully fund and build a schoolhouse, which they wanted to be their sister school, build that schoolhouse. And they had even more money that they could use to invest in books and pencils, to help pay for teachers' accommodations, to help pay for teachers' accommodations, teachers' salaries. So this was an important targeted donation. You know, Rakhshan, for him, he was the head of his student union. He was growing his beard out. He was doing whatever he could to raise money to get them over the top. This is day 30. It's 1.49 centimeters long, and I've got $308.13.

This was a passion project for these kids in this school. And we'd heard from another donor, Watson Jordan, former educator in North Carolina. His son had died as an infant. He'd gone to a wee day. And at the first one, I heard, yeah, and you could build a school in Kenya. And I was like, man, how impactful would that be for those kids to go from having no school to a school? So as a former educator, he thought, wow, what a way to build a legacy, a tribute to his infant son who had passed away.

To give kids who didn't have a school a chance to go to school. So Watson did the very same thing, went out in his community, raised money, exceeded his goal once again to build that schoolhouse. And he was able to fund even more on top of that schoolhouse. And he was sent a picture. This is your schoolhouse, schoolhouse number four in the village of Urquhart. And that was a point of pride for him because he saw his son, the memory of his son was alive in that house. It sounds like these schools were really meaningful to these people, and I understand you actually went to Kenya to try to square the numbers,

the 360 primary schools that We Charity told Parliament about, and the more than 900 primary schools that you found people believed they had fully funded. What did you find there in Kenya? Well, it was interesting as it unfolded before our eyes. We had a number of schoolhouses that had been provided to Parliament, and we went to these villages with our own spreadsheet of how many that we had found that had been donors who had claimed that they had publicly funded a schoolhouse in these villages. In Urquhart, the one I mentioned before where Watson Jordan had fully funded a school for his kid, our research showed that there were 70 primary schools funded in Urquhart. We only found 28 of them on the ground there. School number four, we wanted to find school number four, the one that Watson Jordan fully funded, though he's never seen with his own eyes. We found that school, and our spreadsheets indicate that that schoolhouse, that very same schoolhouse, was fully funded four times over. We went to the village of Rongina, fully funded 55 schools there that we found. On our spreadsheets, we only found 12 schoolhouses and a library on the ground there.

We wanted to find that school that Rakshan De Silva and Iroquois Ridge High School had fully funded. And we found that one. There were 20 schoolhouses there, though fundraisers had raised money for 48 there. And here was the thing that was really interesting, because when Rakshanda Silva, he really wanted to go to Kenya to see that school, that his school had fully funded. And when he did, he took a picture of that schoolhouse. And in that picture And when he did, he took a picture of that schoolhouse. And in that picture contained a clue of what was happening here. One that he wasn't even aware of.

That the picture of the schoolhouse over the door, you saw the letters MPCF and then a number beside that. And I said, do you know what those letters stand for? He said, I don't have a clue. Well, that's the Michael Pinball Clemens Foundation. That's a football CFL legend, Michael Pinball Clemens. He has a charitable foundation. That logo over the door was the indication that that school was already paid for. Rukhshan had no idea of that until we pointed it out to him.

And frankly, when we did, he was heartbroken. Wow. And I'm wondering if you spoke to any WEA officials while you were there and what their explanation was. Yeah, we, of course, we wanted to speak with WEA officials. And we talked with a senior executive there, Carol Mora. She's a Kenyan. She's been involved with the charity, working with them on the ground for years. And we went to the WEA compound, and it's very impressive. I mean, I want to be clear about this.

The impact that the charity has made in Kenya is impressive. They've got a boys' high school. They've got a girls' high school. They have a clinic. It's more like a small hospital that's an important lifeline to people in the Maasai Mara region of southwestern Kenya. So I was given a tour of what they've done there, and I saw it with my own eyes. So it was interesting when we could see this. But what we were told from the outset, from when we arrived, is our approach was wrong. Counting schoolhouses was wrong-headed, and it was a wrong approach. Carol would tell us that we needed to be measuring impact.

It was all about the impact. But it's not about the infrastructure. It's about the impact, the lives that are touched every single day. Do you think it's wrong for us to be coming to count the buildings, to see what has been done on the ground? That's the wrong approach, Mark. That clearly shows that you don't understand our model. You know, she said to us, you don't understand the funding model.

Here's how the funding model works. We ask people to make a donation to a village. It's a, what they call a holistic donation. So that goes to pay for all kinds of projects in a village. We never tell people that their donation is going to build a particular schoolhouse in a particular village. That's not the way it works. When a donor funds a village, we will definitely send a picture from that village to the donor. And it's not just one donor funding this village, because it's not just an empty classroom. We have learners in that classroom, learners who are getting school meals, who are getting, you know, health screenings. We have teacher trainings that are happening. All this programming... However, we have speech after speech,

video after video, website testimonial after website testimonial, people saying exactly the opposite, that they were told they had funded a schoolhouse, they were provided a picture of that schoolhouse, they were told the location of that schoolhouse. But then Carol said something interesting to us. She said that instead of the number 360, which was the number that was given to Parliament, they now had a new number, the number 852. structures that We Charity has funded in Kenya. So what's an educational structure? Well, that could include high schools and individual classrooms in a high school. That could include

libraries. That could include teachers' accommodations. That could include kitchens in villages that kids would access, school kids would be accessing. And we were told, as I mentioned at the outset, Carol said, don't count schoolhouses. Well, that's what exactly what they had been doing while we were doing our investigation, is going out and counting structures, educational structures, that they brought to a number that was closer to ours. But not really, because we go back.

We were counting primary schoolhouses in Kenya. The number they provided had many, many other buildings thrown in. But when it came down to the number of primary schoolhouses in Kenya. The number they provided had many, many other buildings thrown in, but when it came down to the number of primary schoolhouses in Kenya, it was 360. I'm going to go. and industry connections. I saw a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. And so that's what you heard from WE officials in Kenya. You also managed to communicate with dozens of sources,

people who were formerly and currently connected to the WE organization. And what were you able to glean from them? In our investigation, we were in contact with many people who used to work at the WE organization. First of all, they were providing us with inside information, including leaked documents. Secondly, we would share our spreadsheets with them and say, does this make sense to you? And they would confirm the information that we were seeing. Thirdly, many of them were saying to us, carry on with your investigation. It's important that this information gets out. We spoke with one source, a former WE employee, and we protected

their identity because so many of these people, virtually everyone we talked to was afraid to go public because they're afraid of legal reprisals from the charity. But they said it was a common practice to overfund projects in Kenya. It made money and that Mark and Craig knew that. Another former staffer, also fearing legal reprisal, knowing how powerful the brothers are, said overfunding was, quote, a strategic decision by senior leaders, end quote. And the brothers were made aware of this by staffers who were uneasy about it, but they were told it was about the ends, the overall goal. And if that was inherently good, then the means didn't matter. And others say concerns were raised

and they warned the Kielburgers about, quote, playing with fire. Concerns were raised and they warned the Kielburgers about, quote, playing with fire. And you mentioned these leaked internal documents. Tell me more about those. Yeah, there was a source who provided us who had heard the consistent denials coming from the Kielburger brothers that anything like this had ever happened. And so this source provided us with internal spreadsheets from We Charity that, you know, in essence, it confirmed our spreadsheets. They're leaked documents that would show the donations from some of their high net worth donors, the biggest prize donors. That would confirm like donations from eight high net worth donors were applied to the exact same schoolhouse in one village. In another village, seven major donors and foundations paid for the same three schoolhouses.

And then you'd look at this sort of accordion of how much does a schoolhouse cost? Well, according to leaked documents, one donor was told it's $10,000 for a schoolhouse. Another one was told it was $12,000. Another one was told it was $15,000. And then there was another striking thing, Angela, and this was the notes in the margins about how to handle the questions and concerns from donors who want to follow up on their projects. Richard Branson, you know, from Virgin Atlantic, we looked at him. He said he wasn't a problem. He says they have not asked us the status of the project. And another family, a generous donation family said, they quote, don't seem to be tracking

items line for line. So, you know, we took this to Charity Watch, which is an organization in the United States that oversees charities for prospective donors, if you want to know, are they on the up and up? And they have actually suspended their ratings of We Charity while they continue an investigation into them. And what Laurie Styron, who's the head of the executive director of Charity Watch, said that this didn't look like an error. It looked like an active strategy to raise a lot of money and then rely on donors not asking questions in order to continue to operate this way. She says this is wrong. and she says those comments we were talking about removes any hope of plausible deniability.

I just want to pause here to note that reporting all of this out, it wasn't easy. You faced some roadblocks over the course of this month-long investigation. Tell me about that. Yeah, it was really interesting to see what we were up against. I mean, the Fifth Estate did a documentary on We Charity last year. So I'd already had a taste of that. When we'd get lawyers letters, interesting, a children's charity had hired, you know, the We Charity had hired a New York City law firm, the same law firm called Boy Schiller that had represented Harvey Weinstein, and they were

sending us letters. This was the last documentary. This documentary, we were getting the letters, legal letters as well before we went to air. But we also got an open letter that was signed by major donors from We Charity. And, you know, this sort of like the who's who of Canadian business. There's former Prime Minister Kim Campbell had signed on to this, the Chip Wilson from Lululemon, people from the Royal Bank. I mean, on and on it went. And they had sent this letter to the editor-in-chief of CBC News saying, we weren't misled. We don't see this investigation by the CBC being in the public interest. You're only going to do damage to communities in Kenya.

Essentially, they were trying to get us not to go ahead with the story. And this letter, if anyone's curious, was then reprinted in Saturday's major newspapers across Canada. Full page ad was in the Globe and Mail, for example, and I've heard it was in other papers across the country. But when they published it on the weekend, it gives you the impression that after our story aired, these people came out and said, we stand with We Charity. That's the title of it. But it should be noted that they signed this letter even before we went to air. So these people had signed onto a letter saying we were wrong or saying that they didn't think our journalism was in the public interest even before we went to air. They signed this letter even before they'd seen a shred of our evidence

that came from former staffers of We Charity, their own documents themselves. They signed this letter. I think it was interesting, and I commend CBC and Brodie Fenlon, who's the editor-in-chief, of standing by us in the face of this campaign and urging us to continue our journalism. That's exactly what we did. And I understand you also had to leave Kenya quite abruptly. Why was that? I understand you also had to leave Kenya quite abruptly. Why was that?

You know, when we were over there, we had interviewed the governor of Narok County, and that's where the We Charities works are based in that county. And he's a big booster of the We Charity. He didn't think that what we were doing was a good idea because he really relies on We Charity and the kindness of donations that come from Canadians and Americans who've been very generous with this charity. And as we found, as we went from village to village, that we'll be there for a while. And in some villages, we were told we couldn't come in, which we found to be kind of odd. And then we got this letter saying that because we had gone to some of these villages, that we had been, quote, tresp the CBC here in Toronto while we were over there

from the Ministry of the Interior, suggesting that we had broken the law. And there was real concern that we could be arrested and we could be detained. So we were given the advice to get back on the plane and come home. And our fact-finding mission to Kenya had ended abruptly. Wow. And so back in North America, as you prepared to publish this investigation, how did the WE organization respond to what you've laid out for us here today? Well, there was another and sort of one last cease and desist, a legal letter for us. But also interesting is they'd hired a forensic accountant to review the flow of funds involved in its Kenyan projects. And they're considering this a quote, rebuttal to our journalism was to show that all the money that was raised for Kenya was spent in Kenya. And they released a preliminary report of that.

And that's all well and fine that we're doing that. And it doesn't really answer the core focus of our journalism. What we were trying to find out is how much money did you raise to build primary school houses in Kenya? How many did you actually build? That's the core question of our quest. And the forensic accountant's mandate isn't set up to answer that question. Right. And I understand that there are some, he wanted the IRS to get involved. He asked the charity for,

he said that they needed to give him $20 million. He was going to sue them $20 million in damages to his good name because he felt he'd been defrauded. The charity felt that that was extortion. Suddenly he went quiet. I'm not sure what happened there, but he was calling at the time that really donors themselves,

the wealthy and the famous who had stood on these We Day stages, should be asking for more accountability, should be asking for more transparency. I have a request for the rich and the powerful and the well-connected, the celebrity and the corporate set who lent their power to the elevation of Free the Children and we charities. I'm asking that you come out of hiding on this matter and go on the record as I have had to do today. Charity Watch, which was the group, the watchdog group we spoke to in Chicago, they said the same thing. Laurie Styron saying, you know, a donor should be demanding an investigation. If it all went to charitable works, that needs to be quantified.

And if it did go to charitable activities, there's still an ethical obligation to carry out the specific programs they promised a donor that carried out with that donation. So in short, if I'm giving you money to build a schoolhouse,

you have the ethical obligation to build a schoolhouse with that money. You can't come back to me later and say, don't worry, I spent it on something good. If that was the understanding between the two, then that's what charity should do. This whole story is just so fascinating, but it also feels like there's a lot more questions here. Do you feel the same way? I do.

It's been a long road. We've spent many months investigating this. We Charity has now gone on to its Twitter site saying that they're preparing legal action against the CBC in the fifth estate. And I think there is more to be done. And it's interesting what the tips that have been coming in to us since our broadcast from donors, from former staffers who want to hear more about this. In the meantime, I'm left thinking of donors like Watson people who've lost children about doing something good on their behalf, that doesn't seem like an awesome group of people to lie to. And we've heard from Watson, we've heard from Rukhshan De Silva. These are people who felt deceived. The charity has come back to us to say they weren't deceived.

Well, you can't undo how they feel right now. That's what we're sort of left with. That cloud of uncertainty is what we're left with. We did our best by getting as much information as we could to answer that simple question, how many primary school houses did you build and where are they? We did our best to answer that question. Mark, thank you so much to you and the team at Fifth Estate for all your reporting on this. Really appreciate this. Thanks, Angela. That's all for today. And if you like what you're hearing on FrontBurner, we'd love it if you would leave us a review or a rating on your podcast app. It really makes a big difference in helping new listeners find the show.

I'm Angela Starrett in for Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.