A 501(c)(3) Nonprofit
Eat The Elephant empowers communities to solve big, tangled problems — by investigating real needs, developing pragmatic plans, and building sustainable solutions, one deliberate bite at a time.
Explore the L.E.A.D. Fellowship Our StoryOur flagship work — Community Needs Assessment and Action Plan Development & Implementation — follows the same four bites for every community we serve:
Students and volunteers study existing data, survey residents, and meet community leaders to identify the specific needs that matter most.
Participants collaborate with community members to turn findings into detailed, practical plans — economic development, infrastructure, education, access to resources.
Plans become projects: seed lending, health clinics, community gardens, public spaces, and the fundraising that powers them.
Local partners own the result. We build the community's capacity to keep the work going long after the project ends.
One flagship fellowship, one scholarship program, and community projects that put both to work.
Learn, Engage, and Do! A semester-long research fellowship where high-school students tackle real community-development problems — currently in Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines — and present real findings to real decision-makers.
Discover L.E.A.D. →Scholarships of $1,000–$5,000 help high-school and college students take part in community-based research — covering travel, housing, meals, and local transit for fieldwork.
See all programs →With Cal Poly Pomona's College of Environmental Design, our fellows' research feeds professional redevelopment designs for four sites in Lubao — two elementary schools, a civic center, and a farmland park.
The Lubao project →In Lubao, Pampanga, four community sites are being reimagined: San Pedro Palcarangan Elementary (~300 students, one laptop for the campus), St. Rita Elementary (a storm-broken cafeteria, no clinic), Santo Tomas Civic Center (2 acres serving ~7,500 residents), and Santo Tomas Farmland, slated to become a community park and garden. L.E.A.D. Fellows research the needs; Cal Poly Pomona landscape-architecture seniors turn that research into a professional capstone design book.
How fellows join the workYour gift puts student researchers in the field and community plans into action. Contributions are tax-deductible.
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