Meet 3 of the Most Inspiring Social Entrepreneurs and Changemakers on Asia’s Most Influential 2022

It’s not uncommon to see street vendors in Metro Manila hawking small foot rugs woven from textile discards, but few really give a thought to the workers who make these rugs by hand. But Reese Fernandez-Ruiz recognised the inequality and social injustice represented by these products. Working as a volunteer teacher in the impoverished community of Payatas in 2007, Fernandez-Ruiz saw that local women were making the rugs and turning them over to middlemen to sell; for their labour, the women made eleven to sixteen pesos a day—about twenty cents—not nearly enough to cover their time or effort, let alone their basic needs.

The solution, Fernandez-Ruiz realised, was simple: cut out the middleman, and put more money directly in the hands of the workers. But the budding social entrepreneur took her idea one step further. She enlisted the help of leading fashion designer Rajo Laurel, whose star power gave the new cottage industry—aptly named Rags2Riches—a priceless boost. With Laurel’s designs to work with, and with no middleman to take the lion’s share of the profits, the women could now make better products, price them higher and earn fairer wages.

In the decade and a half since Fernandez-Ruiz co-founded Rags2Riches (R2R) with her business partners, the company has grown to employ men and women across the Philippines, including 200 artisans who produce clothing, accessories, and other fashion and home items.

The social entrepreneur is forthright about the challenges the business has faced, writing that “we probably lost 8 out of 10 of the things we fought for, and even almost permanently closed our company a few years ago.” But Fernandez-Ruiz’s tenacity and business acumen helped steer R2R to score a big win during the pandemic: in 2021, they began a partnership with the Philippine IKEA franchise, becoming the official sewing and upcycling partner for the furniture retailing giant.

Not only does R2R live to fight another day, but it is also looking to expand, perhaps even to international markets. As Fernandez-Ruiz told Tatler: “Now we are still learning new things, new ways to upcycle scraps, new ways to improve our social impact,” she says. “Our status quo will be ‘always striving to do better’. The social problems we are seeing now are even more complex, especially these days when the pandemic changed a lot of the so-called ‘rules’. So if we ever feel that we have ‘made it’ already, that’s the time when we stop growing.”

Read Reese Fernandez-Ruiz’s full profile on Asia’s Most Influential

Don’t miss: Rags2Riches Co-Founder Reese Fernandez-Ruiz on Why We Should Make a Difference in Society