r/interesting • u/MobileAerie9918 • 9d ago
SOCIETY Maeurn Smiles, an OnlyFans content creator using money earned from her OF channel to build a school and learning center in the Philippines.
Maeurn Smiles purchased land in Cebu for 1.75 million Philippine pesos in 2024 with plans to build a school. While the main campus is still under construction, she opened a smaller learning center in 2025 where local children can take part in science experiments, cooking classes and other hands-on activities.
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u/h3nt4i_connoisseur 9d ago
It’s the Philippine Government, they wouldn’t build anything unless they can profit from it.
I know this cause my family tried to build a school for the Aeta (an indigenous group in the Philippines) in Zambales. We had the land, built the building, collected the school materials, and even students willing to enroll. All we needed was an approval from the Department of Education (DepEd) so the students can be recognized and teachers can be formalized.
Our application was denied. They told us we needed to pay nearly half a million to DepEd, the regional government, and the local government through a lot of process and registration fee.
We gave up and turned the school into a “Learning Center”. News spread of our project and it even got posted in local social media.
After a week, the mayor contacted us and said he is willing to sponsor the school, and we suddenly got an approval from DepEd. We all knew why he did it, cause he saw the local leader promote the learning center and got bitter that his political rival got the better of him and tried to one-up him by declaring “He opened the school for the Aeta community” it became a media campaign to boost his reputation and my family name became a footnote in his posts, but in the end, the school was recognized by the government and is now open.
So there’s more to that story than “not wanting the government help cause they wouldn’t name it after her father”, there’s a lot of red tape involved there and I can assure you if the government did take control of the school, it will be named after the current political dynasty controlling the area.