Junkyard queen, Trining Climaco

Korea.net has launched a new collaborative project with its honorary reporters around the world. Each honorary reporter will write a story on the same topic, but from each of their own home cities. The stories will then be shared with our community of Korea.net readers.

For the first subject in the series, Korea.net asked our honorary reporters to send in a touching story from their home communities. Here's our eleventh story on this subject, from the Philippines.

Trining Climaco is known as the “Junkyard Qqueen“ of the city of Taytay, in Rizal Province, the Philippines. She's a grade school dropout-turned garbage collector-turned millionaire. She started by pushing around a kariton, or a pushcart, to collect scrap recyclables. Later on, together with her husband and children, they decided to start their own junk shop. Just like any other venture, starting is never easy. They would waking up at 4 a.m. in the morning to work at the shop. They also hired men to use their pushcarts and to collect bottles, newspapers, scrap metal and paper. They would then buy what the three men collected and re-sell it all with only a peso in profit.

Eventually, they were earning thousands from junk collected every week. They used the money to buy garbage trucks and also to hire more people to work for them. Because of their hard work and passion, they were able to succeed.

Now, Trining has been able to buy a three-story dream home and was also able to send her eight kids to college, with the youngest studying law.

She proves that nothing is impossible as long as you invest hard work and dedication to make your dreams come true.

By Carlo Rubejes

Korea.net Honorary Reporter

Photos: ABS-CBN News

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