Carreta Cemetery, Cebu
A cup of water
Every visit is company that is actually kept. The power of education is not only in a classroom — it is also in letting a student see the world as it really is.
- 200+ families
- Over 1,000 people
- We keep going back
Cebu
One of the most beautiful islands in the world, and a city of enormous gaps
From the moment you land, their smiles do not ask for your sympathy. Their confidence is not diminished by a low income. Their courtesy does not lose its sincerity because of what they are wearing.
This is a place once ruled by Spain, home to people sometimes called the lost nobility; a city that has kept its plainness and its kindness; a place where people start dancing when music plays; a city full of gratitude.
Here, a cup of coconut water can make someone happy for days.
Carreta Cemetery
Two hundred families, living in a cemetery
Cebu's towers rise high, and not far from them is where the poor live — Carreta Cemetery. It is hard to picture, but more than 200 families and over 1,000 people live inside it.
Pushed to the margins by poverty, the adults have no steady income and the children cannot go to school, and so the same life repeats across generations.
At the end of 2022 we met a couple who were both well. By early 2023, when we returned, both had died of an unidentified illness and nobody knew where their children had gone. Unless you actually walk into their world, there is no way to understand what they are facing.
If their world had more of us paying attention, would their hearts be a little less alone? When we did walk in, they wanted nothing from us and still answered with a smile — plain, kind, and quietly self-possessed.
What we do
We keep going back
SOP continues to visit Carreta Cemetery with food and daily necessities for the children there, and brings students along so that alongside learning English they see something more of how the world actually is.
We believe the power of education is not only in a classroom. It is also in letting a student see the world as it is, and in what that does to how they think about what they have.
This is not a one-off event but a relationship kept up over years. The deaths of that couple in 2023 made the fragility of it plain, and made us more certain about continuing.
- Food and basic daily necessities
- Students come along and spend time with the children
- The visits are part of the programme, not an add-on
- We keep documenting, so the care can continue
- We do not trade on poverty — we only keep an honest record
2023 and 2024
The same place, a year apart
These two videos were filmed a year apart, at the same cemetery, with the same people. Put side by side, "we keep going back" stops being a phrase — it becomes the fact that a year later we still knew where they lived.
What we have seen
Over these years
The photographs below are actual records of SOP students and staff at Carreta Cemetery. Nothing is staged.
What we believe
Having less, they seem to hold more
Having less, they seem to hold more.
Want to know more about how we teach?
This is part of what a programme at SOP includes. If you would like to know the rest, ask us.