Our History

It all started with an irritation, a social injustice, talented but marginalized women, and very passionate young professionals.

Payatas is the site for one of the Philippines’ largest dumpsites. It is also home to thousands of families. Most of these families live through scavenging, doing odd jobs, or taking advantage of contractual opportunities.

Payatas is also home to a large pool of mothers who stay home to take care of their children while their husbands work or look for work. Their time at home, and the garbage pile near their homes, presented several opportunities for extra income for these women. A few years ago, some of these women found scraps of cloth amidst the dump site and around their area. They started weaving foot rugs and rags out of these. Not long after, the trend grew into an informal cottage industry of rug-weavers.

Unfair trade found its way into this informal cottage industry. The mothers lacked the market access and information, and thus, heavily relied on middlemen. These middlemen started to source the scraps of cloth directly from factories. As a result, no scrap cloth could be found around the area that could be used for free anymore. The mothers had to buy their raw materials from a series of middlemen. They would then sell their finished rugs that they weave for days and weeks, to another set of middlemen who get bulk of the profit. The women, who could make around 8-10 pieces of rugs per day, only earned P1.00 per rug (around .02 Cents USD), as a result of this chain of unfair trade.


1st Quarter and 2nd Quarter 2007

A group of young professionals (including Angeline Benavides-Bulan and Memey Mendoza) from Life Directions was brought to Payatas by the Jesuit Brother who was assigned in the area: Brother Xavier Alpasa S.J. Together, they discussed the problem of the mothers and were able to propose initial solutions.

Almost at the same time, a group of students from the Business Innovations Class (including Mark Ruiz and Reese Fernandez) visited the rug-weavers of Payatas. The group of students were able to identify the same problems and created a framework that is designed to direct the women of Payatas to the market.

3rd Quarter of 2007

The Rags2Riches team of young professionals grew (Maan Lim, Timothy Agulto, Bam Aquino, Timi Gomez) to support the growing project that was then part of the Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan (socio-political arm of the Jesuits), CGE (Citizens by Good Example) Program.

Jeremy Kho, Dr. Protacio, and Rodney Laurel, were the first people to provide financial assistance to the budding organization. Their generosity and passion made it possible for Rags2Riches to jump start and emerge into the social business enterprise that it is now. The Rags2Riches team (Management Committee) also believed and invested on the initiative. They pooled in together the Php 100,000 (around 2000 USD) that became the seed capital of Rags2Riches, Inc.

During this time, the Rags2Riches team helped the women improve the quality and style of the rugs and transformed them from multi-coloured to solid-coloured. The market’s response to the elegant and stylish rugs was remarkable. The first few bazaars of Rags2Riches during this time were sold-out and garnered positive feedback. The number of women members also slowly grew from 3 to 30.

4th Quarter of 2007

The Rags2Riches team decided to add more value to the current products by integrating a designer angle. Two of the team members, Angeline Benavides Bulan and Timothy Agulto, got in touch with Rajo Laurel, one of the Philippines’ leading Fashion Designers, and the team sat down with him in an informal dinner.

During the dinner, the team shared the Rags2Riches story to Rajo, and that night itself, Rajo magically transformed ordinary rugs into elegant fashion pieces. The very next day, he was able to provide prototypes. That was the beginning of the RIIR by Rajo Laurel.

In less than 4 months, Rags2Riches was able to grow the initial capital by almost 400%. The overwhelming response of the market, especially during the Christmas season and the momentous November 22 RIIR by Rajo Laurel Launch at the EDSA Shangri-la Garden Ballroom, inspired the team to grow the social business enterprise into a formal corporation.