How A Viral Photo Turns A Begger To Hot Model - The Odd Story Of Rita Gaviola The Badjao Girl

Back in 2016, Rita Gaviola, a 13-year-old girl from Badjao ethnic minority of the Philippines often went street begging in Lucban Town. That girl would have never imagined that just four years later, she would become a famous model. Indeed, no one would have known until a random photo of her went viral on the internet and she was widely known as Rita Gaviola the Badjao girl. It was also an u-turn to the life of a poor little girl.

In just four years, Rita Gaviola went from a beggar to a fashion model working for worldwide famous brands and a reality star with more than 100,000 followers on Instagram. People call her story ‘rags to riches’. Come on, just think about how incredible it is. 2016 was the year when everything started and turned her life upside down.

Back in the days, 13-year-old Rita was struggling on the street, begging for change and food in order to help her family earn a living. This resulted from her family’s financial problems considering her dad was working as a garbage man and her mom was a housewife struggling to provide kids. Life was so difficult for the whole family as they barely had enough food to eat and enough money to send kids to schools.

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On one of her normal days on the street, Rita Gaviola had her picture randomly captured by Topher Quinto Burgos - a Filipino photographer. At that time, Topher Quinto was spending his time in Lucban for Pahiyas Festival. According to him, It was Rita Gaviola’s pure beauty that caught his eyes. The photographer decided to post the picture on the internet without knowing that the picture would blow up the Internet and change the life of that 13-year-old street beggar forever. 

The candid photo of the little girl with nickname Badjao girl went viral in the most unexpected ways and received numerous compliments on her natural beauty. Adoring her beauty, many people have joined hands to lift the young girl out of poverty. She continued to gain increasing attention from the public as more and more celebrities went to social media and praised her unique facial traits and model-like physique.

Everything came to her so quickly that she was immersed in interviews, modeling contracts and film projects. Later on, she even starred in the international reality show Big Brother and became one of the youngest featured people in the show history. 

Despite the decline of the hype around her in recent years, her name is still well-known on social networks especially Instagram with more than 100.000 people following her. Reportedly, Rita is still carrying on with her modeling career. However, education comes first and she is focusing on studying at the moment, so we won't see her that often anymore. 

The inspiring story of Rita Gaviola the Badjao girl is just like a Cinderella came true story in modern life, but we need to get our star aligned perfectly at first. In her case, there was no fairy appear to help but having the right photographer to click her at the right time was just enough!

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