{"id":393,"date":"2026-05-13T03:08:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T03:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/?p=393"},"modified":"2026-05-19T03:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T03:16:11","slug":"an-introduction-to-the-local-community-cambanac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/2026\/05\/13\/an-introduction-to-the-local-community-cambanac\/","title":{"rendered":"An Introduction to the Local Community: Cambanac"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the cameras could tell the story of Building the Coconuts, the Coconuts had to fall in love with the place. That did not take long. Barangay Cambanac is the kind of community that gets into your bones quickly, if you are paying attention to the right things.<\/span><\/p>\n

What follows is an introduction to the place where everything you are about to watch was built, and to the people whose lives this club is being constructed to change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where Cambanac Sits<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cambanac is one of 17 barangays that make up the municipality of Baclayon, a historic coastal town on the southern shore of Bohol Island in the central Philippines. Baclayon itself is one of the oldest established municipalities in the country, anchored by a 16th-century stone church that draws visitors from across the archipelago. Cambanac sits in the hills above, a quieter community removed from the foot traffic of the more recognized tourist corridors.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the 2020 census, the barangay is home to 436 residents, a modest increase from 407 counted in 2015. It is a small community by any measure, representing close to two percent of Baclayon’s total population. But the number of people living in a place has never been the right way to measure its significance, and Cambanac is proof of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

From certain elevations within the barangay, the view stretches across the Mindanao Sea and Tagbilaran Bay, taking in Mount Banat-I, the island of Panglao, the dolphin-watching haven of Pamilacan Island, and on the clearest days, the distant outline of Siquijor province on the horizon. It is, by any honest accounting, one of the most beautiful places you could choose to build something.<\/span><\/p>\n

The founders chose it deliberately.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Daily Life Looks Like<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Life in Cambanac moves at its own pace. Tricycles navigate narrow roads past women tending cows, roosters kept for cockfighting, chickens grazing in open lots, and neighbors gathered in conversation the way neighbors in rural Philippine communities have gathered for generations.<\/span><\/p>\n

What the barangay does not have in abundance is economic infrastructure. Households here are typically stretched thin. Income-generating opportunities for women, in particular, are limited. Access to regular healthcare has historically required travel to facilities outside the community. Young people spend idle afternoons with few structured outlets and fewer visible paths forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those are not criticisms of the community. They are descriptions of the gap that the Bohol Coconuts was built to address.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier in 2026, Holy Name University formally adopted Barangay Cambanac through its Center for Community Extension, Linkages, and Partnerships. The university began sending monthly teams to provide free blood pressure monitoring, blood sugar testing, and livelihood training for stay-at-home mothers, drawing on successful models it had already piloted in other Bohol communities. The fact that an institution of that size saw Cambanac as worthy of adoption says something about the community’s potential and about the need that exists within it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bohol Coconuts arrived at similar conclusions, through different means, at roughly the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why the Cameras Are Here<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

When viewers watch Building the Coconuts, they will see construction footage, planning sessions, setbacks, and breakthroughs. But they will also see Cambanac itself: the landscape, the people who live there, the barangay council meetings, the conversations on porches, and the quiet daily rhythms of a community that is about to have something significant built in its middle.<\/span><\/p>\n

That context matters. It is easy to watch a facility go up and lose track of the reason the facility exists. The cameras are in Cambanac specifically to prevent that from happening.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Coconuts Performance Center is not being built in a neutral location. It is being built in a community with real people, real constraints, and a real history of watching outside projects arrive with large promises and uncertain follow-through. Lerma Moore, General Manager of the club and a sitting Kagawad of Barangay Cambanac, has spent years in local governance watching that pattern. Her decision to support full documentary coverage of the project’s construction is grounded in the belief that visibility is itself a form of accountability. When the cameras are rolling, the community knows that no one is going to quietly disappear.<\/span><\/p>\n

What the Club Is Being Built to Do<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

For youth members of the Bohol Coconuts, the club is designed to provide structured access to elite baseball and softball coaching, academic support, scholarship pathways, and vocational pipelines through TESDA and partner institutions. The athletics program is the front door. The pathways that open after a young person walks through it are what the founders are really building toward.<\/span><\/p>\n

For adult members of the community, the club is designed to function as a gathering hub. The livelihood projects, which include animal husbandry and communal gardening, will generate income that supports club operations while teaching practical agricultural skills. The planned soup kitchen will serve hot meals to children and elderly residents who need them most, drawing on produce from the club’s own gardens and providing the barangay with what it currently lacks: a reliable, welcoming civic center.<\/span><\/p>\n

The goal, stated plainly, is to turn Cambanac into a place where opportunity is no longer something that exists somewhere else.<\/span><\/p>\n

What You Are About to Watch<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Building the Coconuts is a construction story. It is also a community story, and this community is where it takes place. The hills, the views, the neighbors, the skeptics, the believers, the children sitting bored on Sunday afternoons with no particular place to be. All of it is part of the series.<\/span><\/p>\n

Get to know Cambanac now, before the first shovel breaks ground. It will change what you see when the cameras start rolling in June 2026.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the cameras could tell the story of Building the Coconuts, the Coconuts had to fall in love with the place. That did not take long. Barangay Cambanac is the kind of community that gets into your bones quickly, if you are paying attention to the right things. What follows is an introduction to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,13,14,12,18,15,16],"class_list":{"0":"post-393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured","8":"tag-barangay-cambanac","9":"tag-bohol-coconuts-baseball-and-softball-club","10":"tag-bohol-island","11":"tag-building-the-coconuts","12":"tag-holy-name-university","13":"tag-youtube-docuseries","14":"tag-youtube-reality-show"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":395,"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions\/395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohol-coconuts.com\/building-the-coconuts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}