About Us

A non-profit for purpose charity, founded in Belfast by Ian Campbell back in 2012, the Ten Foundations aim is to empower women living in extreme poverty in the Philippines to help them break this cycle that they have always been stuck in.

Through the Livelihood programme our women are taught the skills and given the tools to transform their own lives, by being able to design and produce extremely high quality schoolbags/backpacks to be sold throughout the UK and Ireland instore and online. 

The knock on effect of this is that they are now able to provide their families with food, healthcare, home and improvements. Most importantly they can send their children to school every day, which aids the escape from the extreme poverty cycle that they have been born into.

The charity currently employs over 70 paid staff in the Philippines, which consists of research and development, designers, bag makers, marketing, quality control and a management team to oversee the project. 

As previously mentioned the charity is founded in Belfast, which manages the sales process for the bags in our two stores, as well as our school roadshow. Along with selling the bags, our stores sell homeware, furniture, jewellery, clothes and vintage clothes. 

One BIG core value of the charity in Belfast is the fact that none of our staff are paid, as they all are volunteers with the same goal to help others that are in need. 

Our staff are made-up of volunteers from schools looking for experience and to give back, working people who help out in their spare time and retirees.    

"At Ten Foundations want to give people the gift of hope. Hope for the future, for themselves and their families, long term hopes and dreams through empowering women and giving them the tools and skills to improve their own lives. This will allow them to be able to improve their homes, have decent food every day, medical insurance, and most of all to be able to send their kids to school every day."

"Helping the people we work with in the Philippines, I see people, woman especially, who have never had a chance in their lives. Many are over 40 years of age that have had a miserable life of struggle and hardship. For the first time in their lives they can see a light at the end of a long dark tunnel, for the first time in their lives there is someone there who cares about them."

"My dream, my vision is to have many livelihood centres all over the Philippines, helping and training many more people to lift themselves and their families out of the dreadful cycle of extreme poverty they have been born into."

"We have a great template in place that can easily be replicated anywhere in the Philippines, we know how to recruit those in need, how to train them, we know how to make high quality schoolbags/backpacks and how to sell them in the UK and Ireland. We have in the Philippines a dedicated and resourceful team ready and willing to help Ten Foundations in the next phase of its expansion."

"Our schoolbags/backpacks have become a huge part of the Ten Foundations story. I want to build a brand that is synonymous with fair trade, with integrity, sustainability and honesty. A brand that people can trust, I want that brand to be the first choice of school kids everywhere for their schoolbag as well as being the first choice someone has for a backpack. I want people to know that they really can change lives through a simple thing such as a schoolbag/backpack."

"I want to give hope and make dreams come true!"