We stand with WE Charity

An open letter from donors to CBC’s editor-in-chief

2021-11-20 - Dear Mr. Fenlon,

Together we represent the donors who have made the most substantive financial contributions to the WE Villages program in Kenya.

We are proud to have helped support a development model that has created meaningful and sustainable change and has saved and empowered tens of thousands of lives.

WE Charity’s development model is holistic. It takes funding from multiple donors to ensure schools and school rooms are built and can deliver education to children over the long term, or for a borehole to be drilled and succeed as part of a full community water system.

This multi-faceted approach often requires multiple supporters to contribute to a community development initiative. For example, WE Charity’s “education pillar” not only builds, repairs and renovates primary and secondary school rooms, including classrooms, libraries, teacher accommodations and teacher administration spaces, it also delivers multi-year programming that includes student lunches, teacher training and community education initiatives.

As you know, WE Charity has been the subject of media scrutiny over the past year, including three features by the Fifth Estate. Following initial stories, several featured donors published a letter expressing serious concerns about how they were represented, pointing to inaccuracies in the reporting. Since then, many other significant donors have expressed their concerns and pointed to their on-going and continued support of WE Charity and its model.

Nonetheless, the CBC has continued down an ill-informed path. The Fifth Estate has

repeatedly reached out to many of us and/or to members of our organizations over the last few months. We do not agree with their thesis that we, as donors, were misled about the projects in Kenya. We supported WE Charity precisely because of its holistic model that welcomes many supporters. We have all been to Kenya and have witnessed first-hand the impact our donations have made in the country.

We do not see any public interest in this kind of journalism. We are requesting your personal assurance that our voices, as major donors of the projects, will be appropriately reflected

and considered.

We are asking you, as Editor in Chief, to prevent further damage to the work and to the communities in Kenya that we have tried so hard to help.

Sincerely,

Dave Richardson

Chip Wilson

Matt Corrin

Kannan Arasaratnam, CPA

Jon Levy

Greg & Olivia Yuel

Barb Cowen

Dr. Michael Pearce

Ken Alexander