A content creator from Cebu left school at 17 because her family could not pay the fees. Today she has bought land in Naga, Cebu with her OnlyFans earnings, opened a learning centre for local children and is building a full school. She wants to name it after her father.
Her name online is Maeurn Smiles, and she posts on Instagram as @maeurn.tv. Her story spread after the American celebrity site TMZ reported it in August 2026, and Singapore's Mothership picked it up on 5 October.
The land, the learning centre and the school
According to TMZ, Maeurn bought the land in Cebu in 2024 for ₱1.75 million, about S$35,750.
Her first plan was simple: donate the land and let the government build a public school on it. She changed course when she learned that a government-built school could not carry her father's name. So she decided to build it herself.
The full school is still under construction. In the meantime she opened a smaller learning centre in 2025, where children from the area do science experiments, cooking activities and other hands-on lessons. Mothership, citing the Philippine Daily Tribune, reports that the main school will serve about 300 children once it opens.
The teacher she never got to be
Maeurn grew up poor in Cebu. She wanted to teach, but college was out of reach.
"I always had an interest in teaching since I was young, but my family did not have the money to send me to college," she told TMZ, as quoted by Mothership.
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Before OnlyFans, she taught English online to students in China. The school, in a way, gets her back to the job she wanted at 17.
Why the story hit home
Many kababayans in Singapore will recognise the shape of this story, minus the platform. A daughter leaves school early. She earns money far from what she trained for, or in a job her neighbours side-eye. She sends most of it home so the next child in the family can finish what she could not.
OnlyFans divides opinion back home, and her story will too. Some readers will praise what she built; others will question how she paid for it. The gap she is filling is real either way. Public schools in Cebu lean on private help: in July the Daily Tribune reported SM Foundation rebuilding classrooms and an ICT room at two Cebu elementary schools.
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If you want to help a school back home
You do not need to buy land. Kababayans in Singapore help schools in the Philippines in smaller ways:
Adopt-a-School Program. DepEd's programme, set up under Republic Act 8525, lets individuals and companies fund classrooms, equipment or feeding programmes at a public school. Donors can claim tax incentives in the Philippines.
Brigada Eskwela. Every year before classes open, public schools ask parents and the community for paint, cleaning supplies, chairs and volunteer hours. Ask your barangay school what it needs.
Your old school's alumni group. Most have Facebook pages and run drives for books, laptops and scholarships. A Singapore-dollar donation goes far.
School supplies in your balikbayan box. Notebooks, pencils and backpacks for the children in your street cost little here and mean a lot there.
Send money only to a school, foundation or alumni group you can verify. Ask for receipts and photos of what your donation bought.
