TRY promotes education
through expert collaboration
by funding local NGOs.

Our Values

TRY Foundation was founded on January 6, 2020 with the mission to promote literacy in the developing world – more specifically in countries with prominent cotton industries – by ensuring that the children in these countries have access to education. The goal is also to share knowledge about cotton in order to educate consumers on how they purchase and think about cotton products.

The heart of TRY’s mission lies in Pakistan, where the cotton industry accounts for 10 percent of its GDP and more than half of the country’s foreign earnings. Additionally to being the fifth-largest producer of cotton worldwide, Pakistan is also home to a rich culture and people. Through education, TRY aims not only to create a literacy revolution, but also promote the beauty of Pakistan throughout the world.

Another one of TRY’s goals is to raise awareness about where your products come from and how they are made. By teaching the ins and outs of the cotton industry, TRY would like to make consumers more mindful about the products they buy and perhaps change the mentality around the value of such products.

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Giving back
to the community

After 30 years of work in the cotton industry in Pakistan – which were initially met with culture clashes and struggles in communication – TRY founder Henriëtte Scheffer realized it was time to give back to the country which taught her so much.

“The lack of good primary and secondary education has had a major negative impact on the development of this industry in the past 30 years. By paying close attention to this in the factory and investing in education for our employees, we have seen and learned to turn things around for the better.”

Providing education then became a priority. In 2012, the Jet Campus came to life and remains a success to date. Now we want to continue the work Henriëtte has so passionately started.

With your help, we would like to continue building schools the same way we started: committed to empowering the community and amplifying its voice.

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Transparency

One of our key values at TRY Foundation is staying transparent about the work we do. That’s why we have vowed to partner with organisations that share the same principle and are equally open about their mission.

We aim to deliver change straight into the hands of those who need it; no bureaucracy, no third-parties, no hidden receipts. We would like to create our own infrastructure, so that every cent of donation goes into our mission: building and maintaining schools in order to empower the community we serve to become fully self-sustaining.

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Respecting Identities

The way to truly empower a community is to listen to its people and let them lead the way. For that reason, we built our very first school with the intent of staying true to the country’s identity.

In underprivileged and highly religious areas of Pakistan, education for girls is often met with distrust and skepticism. One of the reasons why parents were eager to allow their daughters to attend our school and later on become workers was they felt that their beliefs were still respected by having an all-girls section.

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“Weaving quality to

educate, for a better world.”

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The TRY team

Slide 1

Meet the TRY team

The TRY Foundation team is hard at work to achieve our mission. Meet our team members making that possible.

Slide 2

Henriëtte Scheffer, President

Henriëtte worked in the textile industry in Pakistan for 30 years. Founding TRY Foundation was the opportunity she saw to give back to the country that taught her so much.

Slide 3

Thea van Bommel Scheffer, Treasurer

Thea dedicated most of her career to the banking industry, but when presented with the issues of illiteracy in developing countries, she decided to join forces with her sister and found TRY. “I strongly believe in the power of people working together on a mutual cause. You cannot change the past but you can influence the future, using your own experience and learning from one another.”