WE Charity’s Actions Leave a Trail of Enraged, Grieving Donors
Organization faces calls for probes in Canada and the U.S.
WE Charity’s Toronto headquarters, center, last September. The organization faced an unfamiliar level of scrutiny after Trudeau’s government in June announced WE had received a no-bid contract to distribute pandemic aid.
Photographer: Cole Burston/BloombergAfter Don Jennison died in April 2005, his wife of 50 years, Joyce, wanted to honor him in a special way: Instead of a tombstone, she put C$4,000 toward building a school in Kenya to better honor her husband, a former principal.
Sales of fair-trade coffee at the Jennisons’ church helped raise enough money to fund a schoolhouse, a teacher’s salary for two years, and a latrine. Two years after construction, WE Charity, then known as Free The Children, sent pictures of “Don’s School House” — a tidy cinderblock building with a white plaque embedded in a shield-like concrete mount. “This school has been built in memory of Don Jennison,” it read, “through the generous donation of Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church Toronto, Canada.”