Abandoning a destructive lifestyle in the slums, the city of Manila is developing at a swift pace. Many people migrate from surrounding rural areas to flee from poverty and hunger.

Instead of finding work to earn their living, many of them end up in one of the many slums, struggling to survive in a hostile environment. Especially young people are at risk of falling into drug addiction and getting engaged in criminal activities.

Onesimo helps children and young adults from the slums of Manila to abandon a life in poverty, drug addiction, and criminality. Since 1996 hundreds of youth have been enabled to earn their living and become members of society who look after their families and participate in their communities.

The Onesimo program consists of the following main elements:

• 350 youth participate in a 2-3 year full-time residential program including rehabilitation,
• Alternative school programs and social integration. One hundred seventy of these young people are trained in full-time vocational courses during 3-10 months.
• 2000 youth and children take part in camp programs – an essential complementary element of the hard work in rehab, school, or training as well as an excellent opportunity for young people to get a time-out from the strenuous life in the streets and the slums of Manila.

While residential decontrol capacities have been growing organically in partnership with communities and churches which are located directly in the slums, the central infrastructure for vocational training and camps is overstrained.

To enable all of the Onesimo clients to complete the rehab and training program, Onesimo plans to extend over the next five years training- and camp-facilities two driving hours outside of Manila (the Matalinting Farming Camp).

The new facility should combine two purposes:

• Extend the existing vocational training with agricultural training in subsistence farming, focusing on sloped terrain.
• Extend camp capacities to support of rehab and social integration.

Besides the current target group of young people living in the slums, poor young people from rural areas will also receive agricultural training. With this new focus, Onesimo aims to address the root of the problem of growing slums in Manila and enable people to secure their living in rural areas around Manila and to help fight the issue of land erosion.

Goals

1. The three main goals of Onesimo Farm&Camp are:
   Vocational training: Every year, 32-64 young people from the slums of Manila as well as from rural areas will be trained in agricultural land technology focusing on sloped terrain subsistence farming.
2. Camps: Every year, an additional number of 1’200 children, young people, and young families (alumni) will be trained and coached during retreats, training, and work outreaches.
3. Support of rehab: Every year, 300 participants of the rehab program experience rural life in resorts.

In the first phase of the development of Onesimo farm & camp, the infrastructure will be built to cater to 32 participants of vocational training and about 120 participants who can take part in 6 one – week camps during summertime.
Programs and Services
To reach these goals, Onesimo will develop the following services:

Vocational Training

Onesimo Farm&Camp will offer the following programs:

• 3-months full-time training for groups of 8 to 16 participants following the recognized Sloping  Agricultural Land Technology (SALT) program developed by the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC). Subjects: stabilizing and fertilizing sloped terrain, growing crops (such as Rambutan, coffee, banana, citrus, maize, upland rice, s. appendix), small animal husbandry.
• 1-month rural life experience module as part of the Manila rehab program.
• 3-day visit: Orientation, including hands-on training.
• 1-day visit: Orientation and introduction of program and services.

Camps

• Onesimo Farm&Camp will host 120 young people and young families in camps with a duration of three to seven days. Residential participants of the rehab and training program, as well as their relatives, will benefit from this offer. This will include retreats for children, young people, and young families as well as   work camps and leadership training (s. appendix)
• Operating Farm as a fundamental infrastructure for Training and Camps Both services will be integrated with and build around a demo farm, which will be run according to the SALT 1-4 system, an innovative, well-established approach to farming in sloping areas such as the surroundings of Manila (s. appendix). The farm will, among others, provide food for the Onesimo centers in Manila.