A quarter century of learning has set us up for generations of sustainable impact
Twenty-five years ago, Toy Story was the biggest blockbuster movie and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity the most-talked-about book. Pogs, those little colourful cardboard discs, were all the rage. The least popular thing you could do was volunteer. And we admit that we weren’t exactly the cool kids when we started WE Charity in 1995.
A quarter century is a long time, and a lot has changed (though not everything: Toy Story is still a perennial favourite in our homes). Today, caring is cool and the popular kids all want to make a difference.
In 2000, Statistics Canada found that 29 per cent of young Canadians, 15 to 24, were regular volunteers. By 2013, that number had jumped to 66 per cent. Meanwhile, WE Charity has grown from a group of 12-year-olds to a global movement with almost 20,000 schools involved, and filling stadiums with passionate young volunteers.
The most important lesson we’ve drawn from our first 25 years—one that will continue to guide our next 25—is that for change to be transformative, it must be sustainable. That means meeting the needs of the present while planning for the future. To ensure we’re constantly moving the needle in the right direction, we partner with companies, foundations and families that care; their reach and resources help us scale, deliver our programs efficiently, safeguard the long-term viability of our projects and make WE Schools and WE Day completely free.
WE Schools used to be analogue. If you wanted to get involved, we’d send someone to visit your school or a campaign kit full of posters and resources via snail mail. Our audience reach was limited. Now, new digital tools have enabled us to work with students in every province and territory in Canada and beyond our borders. Thanks in large part to infrastructure and technology support from our partner TELUS, our transition to digital means more young people get involved in our campaigns, receive guidance from virtual program managers, find a sense of community at our events and make a difference on the causes they care about.
Those causes are also changing. We’ve heard from teachers and students about their number one concern: mental health and well-being. So we launched WE Well-being to provide students with educational tools and resources to promote their own mental wellness while leading initiatives that create change in their communities.
Solutions to the world’s biggest problems could come from those very communities. What’s needed is an incubator and accelerator to get game-changing ideas off the ground. WE Social Entrepreneurship, enabled by our partnership with RBC, teaches financial literacy, project management and job skills to young people, ushering in the next generation of socially conscious leaders.
Doing more, and doing it more efficiently—that is what sustainability looks like, and it means we are able to inspire, educate, empower and change the lives of more young Canadians than ever before.
That same spirit is driving new, sustainable projects through WE Villages, focusing on building human capital in developing communities. Our global programs have empowered over one million beneficiaries to help lift themselves out of poverty. Like the WE Agricultural Learning Center in Ecuador’s Amazon basin, where we share our agricultural expertise with small-scale cacao farmers to help them feed their families and gain access to wider markets.
That focus on empowering sustainable human capital is being put to practice at WE College in the rural Maasai Mara of Kenya, where the first generation is going on to higher learning. Young people who started at primary schools built by WE and graduated from award-winning high schools built by WE, will be fulfilling their dreams and giving back to their communities through promising careers in nursing, tourism, engineering and more, thanks to WE College. These soon-to-be-graduates will lead the next generation of development projects—civil engineers digging boreholes, nurses staffing hospitals and mobile medical clinics, and innovative farmers feeding the country—that will bring wave after wave of impact across the entire region.
To continue to grow and change lives in the years to come, we partner with organizations that share our values and vision. The United Nations recognizes that need with Sustainable Development Goal #17, calling for strong cross-sector, global cooperation to tackle the pressing problems we face. Charities alone can’t end poverty or ensure every girl and boy has access to an education. As the largest economic driver and source of employment, we need businesses to play their part. That’s why we foster partnerships with forward-thinking companies that are committed to being better and living up to sustainable business practices.
Twenty-five years ago we were teenagers with a dream of changing the world. Now we have a proven model that works. In cities and towns across Canada and in developing communities around the world, our first 25 years have set us up to make sustainable impact for another quarter century.