My Story

Intro

Payatas is with 22.3 hectares the largest dum site in the Philippinies. This area is a shantytown home to at least 60,000 people (approximately 12,000 families). While many women there are creative and enterpreneurial, market forces have not allowed them to escape poverty. Reese is the youngest part of the group who started Rags2Riches to economically empower these woman.

About Me

I spent most of my formative years as a daughter of a single-mother and Missionary worker. Because of my mother’s advocacy, I lived in three churches around the Quiapo area in the Philippines. We ate with the feeding program, used the public restrooms, and walked our way to most places, no matter how far. My playmates and friends were street children who were either earning a living for their families or were part of syndicates that abuse and use them.

Whenever I look back at my childhood, I could not help but feel a strong responsibility towards making the world a better place because I was somehow blessed to do so with the scholarships I received for the past few years. My inspiration and motivation to pursue social entrepreneurship is deeply grounded in the experiences I had, the values that were honed because of these, and my dreams of a better world.

I have a hunger for revolutionary ideas that would bring the world to the next level and eventually help the world become more sustainable and ethical.  This has made me an entrepreneur and leader who takes risk and actions that take into account, not only the profit, but also the people and planet that are inevitably affected by my decisions. I believe that we can all make the world a better place and live good and abundant lives at the same time if only we design our lifestyles eco-effectively and ethically from the onset.

Although my work as a social entrepreneur is very fulfilling and enjoyable, I still take time to keep myself open to more experiences. I do this through travelling and exploring different cultures. I also read a lot of books about marketing, social entrepreneurship, Eco-Fashion, Sustainable design, and Sustainable lifestyle.

My Venture

From waste, to wealth, to world-class.
Rags2Riches Inc. is a social business enterprise creating high-end designer fashion masterpieces and home accessories that are ethical and eco-friendly. Rags2Riches empowers women of poor communities, and recycles scrap cloths discarded by garments factories around the Philippines. Rags2Riches is committed to establish a pattern-changing, scalable, and sustainable business that values and invests on:

We are a collaboration of young professionals who saw the different faces of injustice in the country's largest dumpsite, Payatas. Payatas is a dumpsite that is approximately 22.3 hectares, three times the size of a football field. Simultaneously, the area is a shantytown home to at least 60,000 people (approximately 12,000 families) for 27 years since its operation. Payatas is also home to enterprising mothers who were making foot rugs out of cloth scraps that are dumped in their place. Because these women do not have access to the market and are extremely poor, middle men took advantage of their plight. As a result, these women became the most hard‐working yet most negligible part of the value chain. The middlemen now sell the cloth scraps to them and middlemen also buy the rugs from them. We aim to empower communities like, improve the lives, and secure the future of families in these communities through building socially responsible and sustainable community-based enterprises.

Rags2Riches innovatively fosters partnerships with renowned fashion designers, runway models, fashion directors, marketers, and entrepreneurs.

Rags2Riches aims to be a viable and sustainable social business enterprise that would inspire and influence other businesses to do well by doing good. Rags2Riches also aims to engage the market in creative recycling and advocating for fair trade.  We want each buyer to buy the product, open it, feel its beautiful texture, and know that he/she just contributed to a good cause. Each product comes with the Rags2Riches story of transformation and a handwritten signature of the mother who made the product.