CONSUMPTION FOR THE BETTERMENT OF OTHERS

Former employees of WE Charity who requested anonymity because they’d signed nondisclosure agreements recount that Kenya projects were sometimes built as slowly as possible to ensure a steady supply of feel-good tasks for donor groups, which could number as many as 100 people. A running joke among staff was that donor plaques hanging on buildings should be made of Velcro because they were swapped so frequently. (Several ex-employees say this practice was eventually abandoned.) A wall at Baraka Hospital, the medical facility on the strip, was rebuilt at least four times by volunteers, according to three people with direct knowledge. The same three sources say that so-called community mobilizers cajoled villagers into donning traditional garb and cheering with requisite enthusiasm when donors arrived.

In one memorable incident recalled by former employees, a major benefactor came for the opening of a women’s empowerment center. The night before, Craig realized the donor had specified the center was to have a kitchen. Mayhem ensued. Employees were instructed to cobble together a makeshift kitchen with equipment from a nearby high school. Photographs of the result show pots and pans hanging neatly on the wall and tidy shelves stacked with cups and plates. When the donors left, it all went back to the school.

Compounding WE’s troubles, Jesse Brown, one of the lone journalists to scrutinize the charity before the furor, posted a copy of a report that a private investigator hired by WE’s defamation lawyer had compiled on him and his family after he published a critical series on his news site, Canadaland. (“WE Charity was not involved in the preparation of the document,” the nonprofit says.) The Canadian media also picked up on an Instagram post that Amanda Maitland, a former employee who’d traveled to WE-affiliated schools in Canada to give anti-racism talks, had made not long before Trudeau’s announcement. Defying a nondisclosure agreement, Maitland recounted having a speech about the personal injustices she’d suffered as a Black woman rewritten by White colleagues into a bland script about “cornrows” and “the Oscars.” “I was supposed to memorize this new speech and perform it,” she said in an interview. “I don’t know if they understood how oppressive that was.” By the time the media picked up her story, others were adding theirs, alleging an abusive and racist workplace culture at WE; 200 past and current employees ultimately signed a petition to demand that the Kielburgers personally apologize for the trauma caused by a “culture of fear, abuse of power, silencing tactics, and microaggressions.”

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