WE DAY Red Carpet moments hosted by Channel A TV

WE Day is an unparalleled celebration of young people committed to making a difference. WE Schools is the yearlong program that nurtures compassion in young people and gives them the tools to create change in their local and global communities.

WE Charity is a children’s charity founded in 1995 by child’s rights advocate Craig Kielburger. Since 2007, WE Day participants in Canada, the U.S. and UK have raised $45 million, which was given to more than 1,000 charities. Participants have also volunteered 14.6 million hours for local and global causes and collected 5.6 million pounds of food for local food banks.

An article in the Toronto Star newspaper quoting Free the Children (WE Charity’s former legal entity) indicates that WE Day was created to “empower, educate, and above all, inspire”. Since 2007, the annual event has featured a lineup of social activists, speakers and musical performances. It is the start of a year-long initiative encouraging students to participate in the campaigns of WE Charity (formerly Free the Children), or in any other local or global service action of their choice. We Day has been called a “cause agnostic platform.”

WE Day is a free event for all students because it has corporate sponsors. To earn entry, schools must pledge one local and one international difference-making effort to pursue over the school year. WE Charity provides a limited number of tickets to each school and lets the schools decide how to choose which students attend. As of 2014, WE Days take place in 14 cities worldwide, with more than 200,000 students from 8,000 schools in attendance.

WE Day has one of the largest nonprofit Facebook pages in the world, with over 3.5 million likes.The associated “1 like = 1 dollar” fundraising campaign, where the event’s sponsors donated one dollar for each like on the WE Day page, raised over $2 million for Free The Children.

WE Schools

WE Day is followed by a year-long service-learning program delivered by WE Charity, called “WE Schools” (previously the WE Act program). Schools that participate in WE Day are asked to undertake one local and one global action for change during the course of the year. Attendance at the event is free of charge, and in return all schools are asked to follow through on their commitments to these actions.

WE Charity provides materials to accompany the program, including a weekly “Global Voices” curriculum based on the weekly newspaper column by WE Day Founders Marc and Craig Kielburger.

Associated campaigns cover a range of social issues, such as “WE Scare Hunger”, in which participants collect canned food items for their local food banks each Halloween, and “WE Are Silent”, a vow of silence in which participants stay silent for 24 hours in solidarity with children overseas whose rights are not upheld.

As of 2014, youth participants in WE Day and WE Act had raised $45 million for more than 1,000 local and overseas causes, and volunteered more than 14 million hours in their communities.