Community Work · Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines
Eat The Elephant's partnership in Lubao, Pampanga started with design work — Cal Poly Pomona students and L.E.A.D. Fellows planning better schools, plazas, and parks with the community. This page is about the other half of the partnership: the work that happens on the ground, week to week, led by our partners in Santo Tomas.
Our on-the-ground lead in Lubao is Robert Ryan “R.R.” Dimla of the Barangay Council of Sto. Tomas, where he serves as Director of Health Services. R.R. knows the families, the schools, and the streets. Eat The Elephant backs his team with funding and support; the work itself is planned and carried out by people who live there.
On November 2, 2026, R.R. and his team ran a feeding for students in Lubao and served 186 students a hot meal. The students went home fed, and their thanks went home with them. It is a simple piece of work, and it is the kind this partnership exists to repeat: local people, a clear need, and a meal in front of every kid who shows up.
Coming next: in the week of November 9, 2026, the team visits another street in Lubao for a community outreach day — free haircuts, hair coloring, and feeding. We will post the results here after it happens.
In August and September 2026, monsoon floods put 34 of Lubao's 44 barangays under water, two to three feet deep in places. Hundreds of Lubao families passed through evacuation centers, and cleanup work ran across the region for weeks after the water went down. Lubao sits on the Pampanga River delta, so this is not a one-time event — it is the rainy season, most years. Read the full picture on our flooding in Lubao page.
At Santa Rita Elementary School, the school garden has won the inter-school gardening competition three years in a row. Principal Perla G. Banting says the garden helps keep the school open and the children fed. Eat The Elephant's next step there is to help that proven program grow — a student design for expanded edible gardens, drawn with the school, is ready to build on. More on our education in Lubao and food and feeding pages.
Lubao is a farming and fishing town of about 190,000 people. These pages lay out what daily life costs there, and where a small amount of money does real work.
Why a delta town floods every rainy season, what the August–September 2026 floods did, and how families recover.
Read more →Hot meals, family food packs, rice prices, and the school garden that feeds children all year.
Read more →The nearest hospital is in the next town. What medicine costs, and what that means for a family budget.
Read more →About 300 students, ten classrooms, and one laptop at one partner school — and the work under way to change that.
Read more →Wages, prices, and the cost of living in Pampanga — and what $10, $20, and $100 actually buy.
Read more →The design partnership: 18 Cal Poly Pomona students, four community sites, and the L.E.A.D. Fellows' projects.
Read more →A full day of minimum-wage work in Pampanga pays ₱600 — about $9.50. Against local prices, small gifts go a long way. These figures use the Philippine government's own costs: a hot meal at the DSWD standard of ₱25, and a family food pack at ₱797.80.
| $10 | About 25 hot meals for students or evacuees · about 14 kg of rice · about one month of blood-pressure medicine for one patient |
|---|---|
| $20 | About one and a half family food packs — each feeds a family of five for two to three days · about 50 hot meals |
| $100 | About 8 family food packs · about 253 hot meals · about 8 months of maintenance medicine (blood pressure and diabetes) for one patient |
The full breakdown, with sources, is on our wages and cost-of-living page.
Eat The Elephant partners with community leaders in Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines on design projects for schools and public spaces, and funds on-the-ground work led by local partners, including student feedings and community outreach.
Robert Ryan (R.R.) Dimla of the Barangay Council of Sto. Tomas, Lubao, where he serves as Director of Health Services, leads the local team.
About one and a half Philippine government (DSWD) family food packs. Each pack feeds a family of five for two to three days. At the DSWD hot-meal standard of 25 pesos, $20 is also about 50 hot meals.
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
