Issues · Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines
Eat The Elephant's Lubao partnership is anchored in two public elementary schools: San Pedro Palcarangan Elementary School and Santa Rita Elementary School. Both teach hundreds of children with thin resources, in buildings that flood. Both also have staff and parents who show up — and a track record worth building on.
San Pedro Palcarangan Elementary serves about 300 students, ages 5 to 12, in ten classrooms. The school has one laptop. Technology and spreadsheet lessons are taught on a chalkboard. When our team visited in February 2026, students were learning in rooms that overheat and sit underused in the heat of the day — the problem two Cal Poly Pomona design teams took on, reimagining the campus for shade, play, and exploration.
Real fieldwork did happen here: L.E.A.D. Fellow Tyler Yeung completed a full electrical load audit of the school — 12 classrooms inventoried, a monthly electricity bill of ₱4,000–₱6,000 documented, and three aging breakers flagged. His modeled 10 kWp solar system would power the school through the day. The audit is done; the solar system is a proposal in its fundraising phase, not an installation. Read it on the solar project page.
| The garden | Won the inter-school gardening competition three years in a row; Principal Perla G. Banting says it helps keep the school open and the children fed |
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| The needs | A broken cafeteria building, no health clinic, and no basketball hoop — on a floodplain site in the Pampanga River basin |
| The designs | Two Cal Poly Pomona teams designed the grounds in 2026: regenerative edible gardens (Living Systems) and the campus as a teaching landscape (A Learning Landscape) — designs, not built work |
| Next steps | A quote to power the whole school with solar is being gathered through our local partners, and a tutoring pilot — teachers selecting 10–15 students for one-on-one coaching in math, science, and English, with a workbook for each student — was designed with community liaison Carmelita Roque in mid-2026 and taken to the school faculty |
The Lubao work is also an education for the students doing it. Eighteen Cal Poly Pomona landscape-architecture students spent February 6–17, 2026 in Lubao and presented their designs at a final review on May 8, 2026. L.E.A.D. Fellows — high-school and college students in the United States — researched, costed, and are fundraising projects for the same community, from micro-grants for small businesses to health-screening kits. Two Meridian Prep students traveled with the February trip. The full record is on The Lubao Project page.
San Pedro Palcarangan Elementary School and Santa Rita Elementary School, both public elementary schools in Lubao, Pampanga, through the Lubao School District.
A L.E.A.D. Fellow inventoried 12 classrooms, documented a monthly electricity bill of 4,000–6,000 pesos, and flagged three aging breakers. A 10 kWp solar system was modeled from the audit; it is a proposal in fundraising, not an installation.
A pilot designed in mid-2026 with community liaison Carmelita Roque: teachers select 10–15 Santa Rita students for one-on-one tutoring and coaching in math, science, and English, with a workbook for each student. It was taken to the school faculty for approval.
Gifts to Eat The Elephant fund the ground work on these pages — meals, medicine, school projects, and flood-season help for families in Lubao, Pampanga.
Donate The Lubao ProjectCommunity work in Lubao · Flooding · Food & feeding · Health · Education · What a dollar does
