The Kenshi Story
It all began when Liam Foldi was 12 years old and he started reading... and reading. When Liam was 14 years old, after a school trip to FareShare (a charity kitchen in Melbourne) he decided that something needed to be done about the growing problem of hunger and food insecurity in Australia. And Kenshi Candles was born. 
Kenshi grew steadily as the inspiring story of such a young boy starting a social enterprise began to spread.
Candle production moved from Liam's bedroom to the very first hand pour at the kitchen bench. From there the operation quickly moved out to production lines in the family garage.
Throughout school holidays and weekends, Liam's mates would come over to make candles to keep up with demand. But before long they outgrew the garage and that’s when Kenshi Candles became even more life changing!
In 2019, Liam began a partnership with the Chin refugee community from Myanmar who live in Melbourne’s west to make the candles.
After fleeing from civil war, the Chin people spent several years on the run before being granted refugee status in Australia. Some of the older members do not speak English and struggled to find jobs until Kenshi provided them a reliable source of income.
From April 2019, the Chin refugee community made the candles in Jacob's garage until September 2021.
After 2.5 years and around 20,000, Kenshi Candles finally grew large enough to have a proper home!
Kenshi moved to a new candle-making facility in Sunshine that has the capacity to make over 500 candles and diffusers a day!
This professional space allows us to host corporate days for groups of people wanting to show their support for these amazing people and the challenges their friends and family still face back in Myanmar.
Liam decided he will solely focus on eradicating hunger in Australia and use Kenshi Life Changing Candles and Diffusers to feed thousands of people every year. Together with other members of Make A Difference Community, we have now funded over 170 tonnes of pasta and rice for homeless people and families in need.
Liam was offered a full scholarship to Princeton University in USA. The "Candle Boy's Father" Michael, stepped in to fulfil Liam’s vision of funding massive volumes of food for Australians doing it tough and ultimately working towards the greater goal of eradicating hunger in Australia.
With so much production capacity Kenshi began to grow quickly and gained support from hundreds of new partners keen to help feed more people.
In 2023, Kenshi purchased and distributed more than 12 tonnes of pasta and rice in Australia and Myanmar.
Jacob and Michael visit war torn Chin State in Myanmar to see first hand the terrible result of the civil war. As there are no NGO’s on the ground this lead to Kenshi donating over 6 tonnes of rice directly to families who have fled their homes and are living in make shift camps in India and remote areas of Chin state
Please share our story and together we can feed hundreds of thousands of people every year.
The Kenshi Story from 2019